Who was Alex Pretti
This is difficult. But we need to talk about Alex Pretti. The whole story, not just a tiny part of it.
You can listen to me read this essay here:
Quite a few people are offended at my writing on this topic. Hundreds have expressed their displeasure by unsubscribing. Oh well, it’s not different then when I wrote about Covid, or Tucker Carlson or declared that I was a Christian Zionist. Some people have complained that they don’t know how to define me. That means they can’t put me in a box, and nothing makes me happier.
So, let’s get to it.
People who knew Alex Pretti have said he was a kind-hearted nurse. I have no doubt that he was a kind-hearted nurse. But people can be more than one thing.
I spent hours interviewing Maureen “Mikki” McDermott on California’s Death Row. She had been a kind-hearted nurse. While in custody awaiting her trial, she had saved the life of another inmate choking on an apple. But she had also orchestrated the murder of her housemate for the insurance money.
I’m not saying Pretti was anything like McDermott. I’m just making the point that there is always more to the story and if we are to get to the truth, we have to look at all of it.
It has also been said that Pretti was just a protestor who cared about illegal immigrants. But just like Renee Good, it has now come to light that Pretti was not just a protestor in the sense that we traditionally think of protestors, going out on a Saturday to protest their favorite cause. He was involved in online groups that organize protestors to purposely interfere with ICE agents as they try to carry out their jobs, inciting violence and endangering lives.
Protests have become ever more militant and highly organized. They started with the #MeToo movement, went on to the BLM riots, then to the anti-Israel/pro-Hamas college campus protests, and now the anti-ICE movement
I well remember when in 2020, BLM leader Hawk Newsom said in a Fox News interview: “Give Black people their rights or we will burn this country to ashes.”
That was a defining moment for me. He said it out loud, proudly. He wasn’t arrested. He wasn’t accused of being a domestic terrorist.
It seems that interview has almost completely been wiped from the internet, but I found it HERE.
Newsom claimed Jesus was Black (he was not, he was Jewish) and said Blacks were being martyred just like Jesus. Not only did he blatantly lie about Jesus, but the comparison of Jesus to someone like George Floyd—or anyone for that matter—is unconscionable. Jesus gave himself up to authorities, healed the ear (cut off by Peter) of the soldier arresting him, and then willingly died on a cross for the sins of the world. He was the Son of God—he clearly said this. He was not a sinful man. And whether you believe he was the Son of God or not, no one can deny that his example of loving his enemies was the opposite of “burn it to ashes.”
Anyway, where are all the BLM protestors now? Faded away. Gone.
BLM leaders like Patrice Cullers got rich off of the money they claimed to be raising for their own Black communities.
Cullers bought a mansion in a predominately white Los Angeles neighborhood and secured a multi-million-dollar Hollywood deal, gushing about how Hollywood can help BLM.
Did it?
In 2023, Warner Bros Television Group quietly ended that deal and no shows were ever produced.
Remember the joyous painting of the Black Lives Matter slogan on main streets across the USA? In March 2025, crews removed the big yellow “Black Lives Matter” slogan painted on the street just blocks from the White House. Many of the other murals in cities and towns have been removed or are fading with time. Nobody is protesting. Nobody cares. They’re too busy painting new slogans and signs.
And now, just as Hawk Newsom compared Blacks to Jesus …
Tim Walz has compared children hiding in their homes in Minneapolis to Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis.
Listen to these 20 seconds:
Anne Frank hid in a tiny secret room for 761 days because she was Jewish. When the Nazis discovered her, she was sent to a concentration camp where she died along with 6 million Jews.
Do I think families with children who are here illegally but have been here for many years and have no criminal record should be deported? No, I do not. And I know some of you disagree with me on that. But when the dust has settled, we will find out more about who has actually been deported and who has not been deported. The facts will come out, just as they did under Obama.
ICE officers today are in the same situation that police officers were in during the BLM riots.
My two nephews are police officers. The kindest men you will ever know. What they lived through during the riots no one should have to live through. Every day—to this day—police officers’ spouses and children wonder if they will come home alive.
Is there corruption in the police force? Yes. Could the police do better? Yes. I experienced the injustice of the justice system when I co-founded InsideOUT Writers and worked with inner city youth facing life sentences.
But that is not the whole story, and I am not interested in only telling one side of it.
At the same time as I warn that President Trump is opening the door to far-right Christian Nationalists like JD Vance, Tucker Carlson et al, and I criticize Trump’s foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, I can also point out the dangers from the radical left and how both sides are joining together with Islam to bring down Western civilization. I am not on one side or the other.
President Obama was infamously called “the Deporter in Chief.”
In 2014, the Migration Policy Institute (”MPI”) released a report, The Deportation Dilemma: Reconciling Tough and Humane Enforcement, on the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement record. Here is what it found:
The deportation system has dramatically changed over the past 19 years – moving from a judicial system prior to 1996, where the vast majority of people facing deportation had immigration court hearings, to a system under Obama of nonjudicial removals, where 75 percent of people removed do not see a judge before being expelled from the U.S.
The numbers were staggering: in 1995, 1,400 immigrants were subject to nonjudicial removals, representing 3 percent of total deportations. By 2012 that number had sharply increased to 313,000 nonjudicial removals – an all-time high.
I’m not going to get into everything that happened under Obama. But on his watch, 56 individuals died while in ICE custody. People can argue, but those were illegals in custody. That’s different from American citizens being gunned down in the streets by ICE. True, but then, under Obama, American citizens weren’t participating in radical anti-government groups directly confronting ICE to stop them from performing their legal jobs. They were still protesting in the old-fashioned way, gathering in one instance in front of the White House when 112 protestors were arrested FOR BLOCKING TRAFFIC.
The confrontations now are much more radical. They are meant to incite hatred and cause violence.
So, now let’s look at who was Alex Pretti:
Pretti, 37, was an ICU nurse angry at President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration in Minnesota.
One week earlier, Pretti had suffered a broken rib in a confrontation with ICE agents. He told a friend that he saw ICE chasing what he described as a “family” and he stopped to intervene.
On the day Pretti was shot and killed, he again interrupted an active ICE operation targeting a violent criminal illegal immigrant.
Pretti was carrying a loaded Sig Sauer P320 9mm pistol and two extra loaded magazines.
Now, I’m going to stop there. People have argued that he was legally licensed to carry the gun. Fair enough. But why was it loaded? Why did he have two extra loaded magazines?
This has come to light from his encounter with officer a week before.
He knew from previous experience what happens when he tries to stop ICE agents from performing their jobs. He got tackled and injured. I know what would happen to me in Los Angeles if I got in the faces of police and tried to stop them from arresting a criminal. I would be tackled and handcuffed and put in jail. Pretti wasn’t even arrested.
But then, police are not allowed to aid ICE officers. In both Minneapolis and St. Paul, rules state clearly that police departments may not assist in enforcing federal immigration laws. Even when ICE agents’ lives are threatened.
The distinction is raising the debate about where to draw the line between protecting federal agents and actively helping them.
Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, stated that police in Minnesota are put in a difficult position. All law enforcement, whatever branch they may be, want to help one another, but their hands are tied. The agent who shot Alex Pretti “doesn’t have the benefit of slowing a video down or going in reverse or hindsight being 2020,” he said.
Pretti was not just a protestor. He was a member of the Kingfield Signal ICE watch group.
Jeanne Massey, who coordinates rapid response for these networks and lived just down the street from Pretti, confirmed Pretti's involvement. She describes her role as patrolling neighborhoods when ICE is spotted, alerting residents, and witnessing what she calls the "horror" of enforcement operations.
Citizens documenting ICE or police making arrests is legal and if that’s how they want to spend their Saturdays, so be it. However, documenting events as a journalist is very different from interfering with ICE doing their jobs. If you disagree with what you see, document it, upload the videos, research the arrest you observed and make a case for why it was unjust.
But that is not as exciting as going out into the streets, being part of a ‘movement,’ feeling like some sort of savior (what happened to mocking Whites as having a “white savior complex”) and then acting shocked when people get hurt or tragically even die.
Here is CNN’s report on such groups, just to give a balanced report. I have people reading my essays who listen religiously to CNN and I have people who refuse to listen to anything they say. I listen to both sides and if anyone doesn’t like that, sorry but I will keep on doing it.
That said, many might stop reading because I am adding Cam Higby’s report for Newsmax. But you see, Camby did what CNN did not do. He spent days undercover inside the Signal messaging groups these activists use to coordinate their efforts. You can follow the thread, and you will see that these citizens are being encouraged to participate in events organized by a sophisticated, “well-oiled machine running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Each area of Minneapolis has its own group chat, with the city carved up into patrol zones that tell activists exactly where to operate. The chats max out at 1,000 members by midday and get deleted and recreated daily to avoid detection.
What’s the next step? Each side is being radicalized and trained to fight against one another.
Now, let’s look at what happened to Alex Pretti:
Video from the scene shows one federal agent yelling “Gun” and grabbing the weapon from Pretti. The agent is seen walking away with the weapon in his hand, when another agent suddenly stands up and fires multiple times — killing the Minnesota nurse.
Rob Doar, a lawyer for the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said he believes that Pretti’s gun went off after the agent grabbed it, leading the other agent to open fire.
“I believe it’s highly likely the first shot was a negligent discharge from the agent in the grey jacket after he removed the Sig P320 from Pretti’s holster while exiting the scene,” Doar said on X.
The P320 model is widely carried by armed civilians and US law enforcement, including ICE — but has been the subject of more than 100 allegations that it has a defect that allows it to fire “uncommanded.”
Authorities shared a picture of Pretti’s loaded handgun in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, showing a fully loaded magazine.
The weapon appears to be a high-end custom variant, a P320 AXG Combat, which comes with three 21-round magazines. The gun retails for $1,100 to $1,300.
During the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, after Rodney King’s death, a young Christian man named Wally Tope declared that he was going downtown to preach to the rioters. He was a friend of our family, and Dad advised him against it. As people who have read my essays know, my dad was a courageous man and never feared confrontation. In the 1970s when I was a young teenager, we regularly went up to Berkely where he preached on the Free Speech Platform at Sproul Plaza and debated Black Panthers, Hari Krishnas, communists, anybody. In those days, it was all about engaging with one another in heated debates. I don’t recall the kind of toxic hatred we have today.
We were the “Jesus People” hippies. Above is my dad, Dave Hunt, and a friend James Weston. Below is my sister sitting beside our table with Christian material to give away. I remember that cute guy with the bandana on his head!
Our family smuggled Bibles into communist countries, a dangerous undertaking, punishable by prison, my dad praying that God would blind the eyes of the guards at every border crossing, and that’s what happened. Every suitcase was opened except the one with the Bibles.
Dad spoke out publicly against the powerful prosperity preachers of his time, who labeled him “demonic.”
And much more.
He was fearless but he wasn’t a fool. He would never have tried to reason with enraged people in the middle of committing acts of violence. Riots should be dealt with by the police.
Despite the warnings, Wally went anyway, believing he could make a difference. According to the Los Angeles Times:
As he was preaching, two men began to beat him. When he tried to flee, he fell to the ground, and the men kicked him repeatedly in the head for nearly three minutes, witnesses said.
Not much else was reported about Wally except that article. He was a kind person who wanted to do good. He didn’t carry a loaded gun with him. He wasn’t there to confront police. He was there to preach to rioters.
Today, Wally would be turned into a mockery or a saint on social media, depending on whatever side you are on. Certainly, he wouldn’t fit the definition of a martyr for the anti-ICE revolutionaries.
The victims of illegal immigrants aren’t raised to martyrdom level when if anyone should be martyrs it should be them.
Just as they cried over Gazans, but not Jewish women raped and murdered by Hamas (and civilian Gazans), Natalie Portman and Olivia Wilde, and other celebrities like them, wear ‘Ice Out’ pins to honor anti-ICE activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
I can’t recall Portman or Wilde crying over Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl sexually assaulted and killed by two illegal migrants from Venezuela.
Where were their tears for Larisha Sharell Thompson. Larisha, a mother, was driving to her friend’s house when six illegal aliens, between the ages of 13 and 21, pulled up alongside her car and randomly shot her to death. Just three months earlier, in March 2024, the two men had been apprehended near El Paso by US Border Patrol and released with a notice to appear in court in the future. An insane policy. Does anyone think men like this two are ever going to show up for a hearing?
Nor have they cried over Iranian women tortured and killed for protesting against the hijab or what could very well be 35,000 Iranians massacred during the current uprising.
I have such a problem with this hypocrisy. Wealthy celebrities who have never known what it means to be oppressed, who don’t have to worry that if they go out into the streets they will get shot by snipers ordered by the government to kill them (not that they would ever go out in the streets and actually join a protest), who don’t have to worry they will get tortured and killed for criticizing the government as happens in Gaza and in Iran and in every single Muslim country. No, they are so smug and self-righteous, it just sickens me.
I have to end with Rickey Gervais. This moment when he hosted the Academy Awards will live on forever as the most brilliant smackdown of the Hollywood hypocrites.
“If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent.”
But it’s not only our celebrities that hide in their gated communities and have private security as they clap for the pawns who go out into the streets and get their hands dirty for the latest “cause”.
It’s those ordinary citizens flooding the streets, protesting about issues that never crossed their minds until they were told by the organizers of these protests that they were supposed to care.
If they really did care, they would be involved in their own communities, churches, schools, inviting illegal migrants into their homes for a meal, offering to take their children to Sunday school, buying them clothes.
I’m glad Tom Homan is heading to Minneapolis. Homan has been in immigration enforcement for four decades.
In 2015, Obama awarded him the Presidential Rank Award for his excellent service in immigration enforcement.
I remember an interview where he said he cares about every child that crosses our border and I could tell that he meant it. He said that until you have sat with a child who has been raped and abused on that journey to the US, until you have seen the back of a truck where illegal immigrants were burned alive by the coyotes transporting them, you will never understand how hard his job is and how much he wants to end the dangerous journeys to reach our border.
I pray there is a fair and just investigation into what happened with Alex Pretti and with Renee Good.
As for these protests, it is my personal opinion that people should not be allowed to protest just anywhere. Agitators should not be allowed to intimidate Jews trying to enter a synagogue, right next to where Jewish children go to school. Muslims should not be allowed to pray by the hundreds and the thousands in streets outside churches or in public places like Times Square. Anti-ICE protestors should not be allowed to pull up on officers and block traffic, blow whistles and turn tense situations into deadly ones. Protests should be held in designated areas, with permits.
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I agree with you, Karen. I find it incredible that supposedly well-educated, seemingly sane people really believe progressive politicians and others act in the interests of immigrant communities by encouraging their constituents to resist federal government in the most irresponsible way. How is it possibly making sense? Because no matter how one looks at the immigration or the actions of the Trump administration, what these activists did has not helped illegal immigrants - or anyone - in any way. Are people really so misguided that they don’t understand the manipulations of their politicians, or they do but hate the bad orange man so much they are willing to lose their lives fighting him? Or have people lost any meaning in their lives, faith, purpose, what have you, that they go out and do these foolish things under the pretense of justice?
For me the biggest tell on Pretti’s mindset is that he didn’t take his drivers license or his firearm carry card, only his gun. That’s called “sanitizing,” and it’s to thwart identification by authorities. Anybody who does it has nefarious intentions.