January 27 2026, 08:15 
Folks in Minneapolis are taking to the streets in larger and larger numbers after ICE agents shot and killed a second person over the weekend and have continued to wreak trauma and terror on thousands of families and protestors.
The killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, has intensified the rage that had already boiled over after an agent killed queer wife and mother Renee Nicole Good.
Related
Feds peppersprayed this award-winning out journalist while she reporterd on Alex Pretti’s death
Despite the stories the federal government is telling, video evidence shows neither victim was a threat to the agents at the time they were shot. Good was shot at least three times while driving away from ICE agent Jonathan Ross, and Pretti had already been beaten to the ground for helping a woman who had been shoved by an agent when he was shot 10 times.
Officials claim he was holding a gun. Videos show he was not.
Insights for the LGBTQ+ community
Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
Administration officials continue to accuse Good and Pretti of being “paid agitators” who essentially had it coming. They have also shown no indication that ICE will be alleviating its (potentially unconstitutional) occupation of Minneapolis anytime soon.
But residents are not backing down. Instead, they have created some of the most effective protest networks in American history.
Trans writer, podcaster, and activist Margaret Killjoy – who recently traveled to Minneapolis to report from the ground – wrote last week on Bluesky that in her 24 years involved in protest movements, she has “never seen anything approaching this scale.”
“Minneapolis is not accepting what’s happening here,” she went on. “ICE f**king murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.”
Killjoy explained that half the street corners in the city “have people–from every walk of life, including republicans–standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.”
She praised the decentralization as a strategy that “the state is absolutely unequipped to handle.”
“There are a few basic skills involved, and so people teach those skills, and people are collectively refining them,” she continued, adding that one organizer told her they hoped the press would cover “the beautiful things they are building here, and not just the worst stories of the worst of ICE’s crimes.”
“What people are doing here is beautiful,” she said. “It’s a tragic beauty, but a real one.”
