On the morning of Saturday, January 24, I was getting ready to walk my dog (reluctantly, for me, due to the bitter cold) when my daughter called. “There’s been another shooting,” she said with anger and distress in her voice, and I knew immediately what she was referring to. ICE has shot someone else, just weeks after federal agent Jonathan Ross killed Renée Good. I abandoned my dog-walking plan and headed a couple of miles north, to the Eat Street area of South Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I often get takeout meals and groceries.
I arrived around 10:30 a.m., just an hour or so after federal agents had killed their most recent victim—37 year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. A crowd of people were gathered on the 2700 block of Nicollet Avenue, one block south of where Pretti was shot. At the end of the block I saw about two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, some in full combat fatigues, others in jeans and sneakers. All the agents had masks, hats, and guns strapped to their chests.
The temperatures were stubbornly frozen below zero. The streets had icy ridges near the curbs, and the snow crunched brittly beneath my boots. There were about 200 protesters onsite, mostly hanging together in loose groups in the middle of the street. Some had gas masks on, in anticipation of agents deploying chemical weapons in their faces. Others wore respirators and ski-type goggles. Others, including me, had only winter gear, including fleece face coverings and sunglasses.
The situation was filled with raw emotion. ICE agents stood at the end of the street, blocking entrance to the area where Pretti had just been killed. Protesters stood opposite the line of agents and began pushing toward them, yelling things such as “murderers!” and “Nazis!” Then, without warning, the ICE agents began running at the protesters. They gave no dispersal order to the protestors, which has been a standard requirement in such situations—they simply began firing flash bangs and pepper balls into the crowd, forcing protesters, observers, and members of the press to run for cover. Agents raced down the street and chased people through a nearby parking lot, hauling away at least one person with rough force.
Sarah Lahm
ICE agents lined up opposite protesters on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, January 24, 2025.
As the protestors fled through the parking lot, the owner of a small Vietnamese restaurant opened her door at the parking lot entrance. I ran inside with a handful of others and caught my breath as the owner wrung her hands in worry. We gathered by the large plate glass windows on the street-facing side of the restaurant so we could continue observing as ICE agents continued to chase people and shoot off tear gas canisters.
Before long, I saw agents chase and tackle a man who then appeared to be unable to stand up on his own. The agents tried to pull him to his feet, but he quickly sank back down. It was impossible to tell for sure whether the man was seriously injured from inside the restaurant, but someone called out that the man on the ground had a broken leg. A young woman—the wife of the man we’d just seen slammed to the ground—soon came running into the restaurant, trembling and breathing heavily. “They took my husband. ICE just took my husband,” she called out before collapsing into a chair. From the window, we observed her husband sitting in the street, surrounded by officers who were trying to drag him up.
Bystanders immediately ran to her aid. Her fingers were shaking too hard to use her cell phone. After someone used her phone to contact the woman’s family, she told us her husband was Matthew Allen, a local musician known as Nur-D. We then watched as a small white pickup truck drove into the middle of the street. ICE agents then pulled down the trailer door of the truck as several of them loaded Allen into the back and drove away.
His wife was inconsolable. One of the people who had gathered in the restaurant for shelter and warmth gave her a cup of water. Soon more people came inside, their eyes and skin red from the effects of the tear gas. A little station was quickly set up by protesters with saline spray, napkins, and cold water to help flush out the painful irritant. Later, the restaurant’s owner brought out platters of shrimp spring rolls and hot egg rolls for those of us gathered inside for safety.
All the while, the tense scene on the street continued. At one point, the flashbangs were so loud we thought the restaurant’s windows might shatter.
I ventured back outside to see the situation up close. I made the mistake of touching a spent tear gas canister and ended up with stinging eyes and skin, even though I was wearing gloves. I had grabbed it because others at the scene said it was important to document what we were seeing, with pictures, videos, and the canisters, for use in future litigation by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter.
A line of federal agents still occupied the intersection of 27th Street and Nicollet Avenue. There did not appear to be anyone in charge, an account that was later backed up by local NBC News reporter Jana Shortal, who was pepper-sprayed and shoved to the ground by federal agents despite having a clearly visible press pass.
Chad Davis (CC BY 4.0)
A memorial in Minneapolis for Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by ICE agents, January 25, 2026.
By approximately 1:00 p.m., the agents filtered away from the intersection, but it wasn’t clear to me why; they appeared to just leave. At that point, the crowd pushed down the street, past a growing memorial for Pretti at the spot where he had been killed just hours earlier. As more people arrived, a vocal, spontaneous protest took shape, with people pounding on overturned garbage bins and leading the crowd in chants denouncing ICE and President Donald Trump.
Helicopters hovered overhead, adding to the din, while small groups of people began appearing on the rooftops surrounding the intersection, presumably for the better camera angles of the crowd gathered in the street. My feet felt like concrete blocks after hours in and out of the cold, so I decided to go home and warm up. As I walked to my car, I passed a police car blocking an intersection. I decided to ask the officers inside what exactly their role is when local, unarmed civilians are being shot with tear gas and pepper balls.
Nothing, they admitted. “There is nothing we can do,” they told me. “We find out about things at the same time you guys do,” one of them said, noting that they can’t intervene with federal troops—even on behalf of the residents of the city they are supposed to be protecting.
Since Pretti’s killing, the Trump Administration has relieved U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino of his leadership role in Minneapolis and replaced him with ICE administrator Tom Homan. It is unclear, however, how this change will affect the operations of ICE in Minneapolis.
There is no one standing between thousands of masked, heavily armed federal agents and people like Alex Pretti, who was a legal gun owner, but clearly no match for the murderous impulses of ICE. The shock of his graphic killing may be moving some needles politically, but pain and grief still hang heavily across Minneapolis. We do not feel safe. We are not safe. And we have no one but each other to protect us.