They told you ‘to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears’, wrote George Orwell in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four about a world carved up into dictatorships. It was their ‘final, most essential command’, he wrote.
In the wake of yet another killing by federal agents of a protestor in Minneapolis at the weekend, the Trump administration is expecting Americans to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears, as depicted in numerous videos available to all.
Alex Pretti, a nurse who cared for military veterans, was fatally shot on Saturday morning in an altercation with Trump’s increasingly infamous Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who for weeks have been scouring Minnesota‘s biggest city for illegal migrants.
His death follows the killing of Renee Good in the same city on January 7, an award-winning poet shot by ICE agents through her car window as she slowly moved her vehicle away from blocking them.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a Maga zealot who is clearly out of her depth in such a crucial national security role, claimed Pretti had ‘attacked’ federal agents and was guilty of ‘an act of domestic terrorism’. She’d previously accused Good of the same thing, claiming the poet had been ‘weaponsing’ her vehicle.
Yesterday, Trump appeared to sideline Noem, announcing that his more experienced border tsar, Tom Homan, will be ‘managing ICE Operations on the ground’ in Minnesota. Still bullish, he claimed Homan would ‘continue arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens‘.
FBI Director Kash Patel, another Maga true believer promoted way beyond his competence, echoed Noem’s remarks. There is no video footage available to back up any of their claims.
Alex Pretti, a nurse who cared for military veterans, was fatally shot on Saturday morning in an altercation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
Footage of the shooting has circulated online, showing Pretti being disarmed before he was shot
Noem and her ICE agents claimed Pretti had approached them ‘brandishing’ a gun. Turned out it was a mobile phone he was using to record what was going on. A gun was taken from his waistband by a federal agent seconds before he was shot. But he’d never tried to use it. He was unarmed when shot dead.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a sinister Rasputin-like figure in the Trump administration, referred to Pretti as ‘an assassin’ who ‘tried to murder federal agents’. Vice-President JD Vance reposted this claim. There is zero evidence for it.
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino claims Pretti ‘wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement’. There is no evidence Pretti, with no history of violence or criminality, sought to kill anyone, let alone perpetrate a massacre.
Given the outlandish, almost desperate claims of the Trump administration to justify what looks increasingly like federal state executions, it is worth examining in detail what actually happened to Pretti.
From the liberal New York Times and Associated Press to the conservative Wall Street Journal and New York Post, all of whom have studied the video evidence frame by frame (as have I), there is a remarkable consensus about his killing (‘murder’ might be more appropriate).
At 9am local time on Saturday morning in a Minneapolis neighbourhood, Pretti was filming ICE agents at work.
For weeks, their work rounding up immigrants had been hampered by gangs of protesters and Left-wing activists who followed them around, with whistles to alert any migrants in the area and cameras to record their actions.
Pretti and two other protesters were walking away from a group of agents when an agent followed and shoved one of them, who slipped on the ice and fell onto her back. Pretti tried to help her up, putting himself between the protester and the agent, who proceeded to pepper spray all three.
Agents pulled Pretti away from the other two. Five of them then forced him to the ground.
One agent drew his gun and pointed it at Pretti. Pinned to the ground and on his knees, he was now surrounded by seven agents, one of whom discovered a concealed firearm in Pretti’s waistband. He took it from him and moved away from the melee.
Protests have erupted in Minneapolis after Pretti’s shooting, which happened less than three weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agents in the city
Americans are now coming to see ICE as the unaccountable stormtroopers of the Trump administration, writes Andrew Neil
Barely a second later, the agent who’d drawn his gun then fired four shots point blank into Pretti’s back. The agent who’d pepper sprayed him joined in the shooting. A total of ten bullets were pumped into his prostrate figure, all within five seconds. He died at the scene only four minutes after it had all kicked off.
FBI boss Patel said if you take a gun to a protest you should expect the worst.
Pretti was certainly foolish to be armed, but it wasn’t illegal. Even if it was, it hardly merited a death sentence. The Minneapolis police chief confirmed Pretti had a licence for his weapon and no criminal record.
Patel is in no position to complain about someone being armed. Maga types like him are uncompromising when it comes to the right to bear arms. They’ve never complained before about armed demonstrators.
Social media is awash with pictures of Maga protesters carrying not just hand guns but semi-automatic rifles.
The Trump administration’s efforts to excuse what happened on Saturday morning are being seen by the gun lobby as undermining the right to bear arms. When Maga loses even the National Rifle Association you know it’s in trouble.
But the Trump administration is losing much more than that. Public opinion is hardening against its approach to migrants, even though it was a key issue in winning the President a second term.
Voters were delighted when Trump closed the southern border with Mexico to illegal migration after the Biden administration had inexplicably presided over an open door. They had no problem with ICE agents rounding up the bad guys – illegal migrants who were also hardened criminals – and returning them from whence they came.
But they never expected these same agents – masked, armed with sidearms and assault rifles – to grab folks outside schools, shops, factories and offices then bundle them into unmarked vehicles. It smacks of a police state.
Immigrants who’ve been in the country for years, paying their taxes and obeying the laws, even saving up to send their children to college, are being arrested and deported.
Yes, they might have entered illegally many years ago. But Americans now know them as the house-cleaners, gardeners, repair teams and minimum-wage workers in hospitality and retail who keep the system going. Very few Americans want to ‘send them back’.
Especially when it’s often done with a callous inhumanity. Last week, a five-year-old was taken into custody with his father as they arrived home from school and whisked to detention thousands of miles away. A few days later a two-year-old girl was lifted. Both children were from families awaiting their asylum claims to be processed.
Americans are now coming to see ICE as the unaccountable stormtroopers of the Trump administration. Many ICE agents don’t even have proper uniforms, sporting just flak jackets over civvies, bearing no ID numbers, no bodycams, and seem poorly trained and often undisciplined.
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, in synchronised statements rare for ex-presidents, have called for ICE to step back and highlighted the threat to freedom and democracy.
Trump will be more worried by the growing number of leading Republicans who feel the same way. And by the loss of public support: a recent poll shows more than 60 per cent of voters think ICE is going ‘too far’.
The administration is clearly rattled. On top of Noem’s apparent demotion, it’s dialled down the rhetoric in the past 24 hours. After a long phone call with the state’s governor Tim Walz yesterday, Trump agreed to look into reducing the number of ICE agents in Minnesota and allow police to investigate Pretti’s death.
Republicans are already on track to lose the House of Representatives come the November mid-term elections. Any more ICE-style executions and that’s guaranteed. Even the Senate might fall to the Democrats, crippling what’s left of Trump’s presidency. It has all the makings of a moral and political Donnybrook for the administration.
At the height of widespread French protests in May 1968, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was jailed. President de Gaulle immediately intervened to free him. ‘You don’t arrest Voltaire,’ he said.
In Trump’s America they don’t (yet) jail philosophers either. But they do kill nurses and poets, to its everlasting shame.
