Over the past month, the Trump administration has sent thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. On Saturday, January 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, 37, an intensive care nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Preti was the third person shot and killed by federal agents in the area in January.
The Department of Homeland Security initially said its officers fired “defensive shots” after Preti approached officers with a weapon, but video of the incident appears to contradict that claim. DHS announced this week that the two officers involved have been placed on administrative leave. Border Czar Tom Homan said at a press conference on Thursday that the government was working to make the operation “literally safer and more efficient.” He said investigators would “prioritize threats to public safety” and focus on “targeted strategic enforcement operations.”
Our photojournalists Cengiz Yar and Peter DiCampo were on the ground in Minneapolis, covering what they saw in the days leading up to and following Preti’s death. Read their description below.
Cengiz Yar
I arrived in Minneapolis last week to report on the crackdown and local residents’ reactions.
I packed a medical kit, full face mask, helmet, and some tourniquets. These are essential items in your coverage bag when traveling to dangerous and potentially violent areas. We also packed lots of warm clothing, as temperatures were expected to drop below 20 degrees for the next few days. Although I knew that ICE raids and community reactions were intense throughout the region, I was completely unprepared for what would ultimately happen on the streets.
During my few days in Minnesota, I witnessed countless sights that reminded me of moments I had seen during my travels reporting on conflicts around the world. I watched heavily armored Federal troops roll through the quiet neighborhood. In the grocery store parking lot, angry residents shouted at officials and demanded they leave the city. During the mid-afternoon encounter, masked and armed government agents pointed their weapons at me and some protesters. Curious guests in the hotel elevator wondered why I was carrying a medical pack and gas mask. Local residents thanked me for witnessing the situation. A drunk man at a hotel bar berated me, saying that the media was to blame. The wars we waged as a nation abroad are back at home.
On my first day of reporting, I encountered an incident that unfolded over an hour. Late on the afternoon of Thursday, January 22, three construction workers were clinging to the roof of an unfinished two-story house on the far south side of Minneapolis, bracing themselves against the leaning plywood. Federal agents converged on homes and cars on the street and raided construction sites. Officials called on the workers to come down. they refused. They stayed on the roof and were exposed to -4 degree weather.
Federal agents leave the construction site after attempting to arrest three people on the roof. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica
As I stood outside my house, looking up at the men on the roof, I wondered how they were able to survive wearing only high-vis vests and work clothes. Onlookers begged officials to bring blankets. They were told not to enter the building.
Other construction workers were walking around the snow-covered site while their colleagues hung on top. Some yelled abuse at the police. One worker told the men to get off before they froze to death. “At least you can go to a warm cell,” he shouted. One young white worker stuck his middle finger in the face of an employee while he was idling in his car. “Fuck you,” he yelled as he paced the grounds. Six onlookers gathered as well, shouting encouragement to the men above and asking for sympathy from the operatives.
The three men remained on the roof as the young, white construction worker engaged in an angry argument with staff for about an hour.
Eventually, as the time approached 5 p.m., the agent left.
After federal agents abandoned attempts to arrest them, the workers ran up the stairs to deliver blankets to their colleagues. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica
Onlookers rushed into the building and dragged the men down and wrapped them in blankets. “It’s okay now,” they reassured the men. “You did a great job.”
When I arrived in South Minneapolis on Friday, protesters had gathered, shouting, filming and blowing whistles at armed agents in pickup trucks. After several minutes, the operatives threw tear gas into the small crowd of onlookers and left at high speed. The gas drifted down the snowy streets, past cute two-story houses and short, leafless trees. My throat felt like it was burning and I crouched on the ground, coughing up the irritant behind a snowman.
Little did they know that less than a day later, in a similar situation, Customs and Border Protection agents would pin a man to the ground and shoot him multiple times in the back, killing him. Preeti filmed the agent and died while trying to save a woman who was pepper sprayed. As chaos spread in the hours after the shooting, I watched as agents fired tear gas at hundreds of angry protesters who had gathered at the scene of the shooting. Heavily armed law enforcement confronted a crowd of unarmed protesters holding placards and chanting for justice and retribution.
Federal agents sprayed tear gas into a crowd of protesters in a south Minneapolis neighborhood. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica
peter dicampo
It was 9:07 a.m. Saturday morning when I learned someone had been shot outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue. It took several hours before I heard the name Alex Pretti and watched the gruesome video of CBP officers shooting him to death. But I knew that Minneapolis was in crisis after the death of Renee Goode, who was also killed by federal agents, so I grabbed my camera and the warmest clothes I could find. I ran away from home. By 9:29 a.m., I was in my car texting a group of fellow photographers, “Oh my gosh.”
Yellow police tape and federal agents lined the scene of the shooting, all about a block away in all directions. A small crowd gathered. The first person I recognized was not another journalist, but my neighbor. “Peter!” she cried, saying she didn’t really understand what was going on, just that she heard about the shooting and wanted to go there. She sobbed in my arms for a minute and then we parted ways.
More agents gathered. Many were wearing gas masks. More residents and people ready to protest the new killings arrived. A young man stood at the edge of the yellow tape and shouted: An older woman hugged him, trying to calm him down. The crowd’s anger was palpable. “ICE agents, get out of Minneapolis,” they shouted.
Kristin Heiberg hugged a young man who was yelling at federal agents. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica Protesters confront federal agents one block south of where Alex Preti was killed.Peter DiCampo/ProPublica
There are no words to describe how it feels to see this happening in Minneapolis, which I have come to know and love more and more since moving here several years ago. The journalists gathered here over the past few weeks are people I met while on assignment in hotspots around the world. Now they were in my home city.
As the crowd grew, agents fired tear gas to keep the crowd back. The crowd then briefly dispersed, but some operatives grabbed people and detained them. The crowd quickly changed its stance, and a cycle of tear gas, detentions, and regrouping continued.
Federal agents arrest protester who sprayed tear gas into crowd Peter DiCampo/ProPublica
After being tear-gassed once, I stumbled away, fell over and coughed. “Come inside!” I heard someone yell. I looked up and saw a woman opening the door to my apartment. She wasn’t yelling at me, she was yelling at two photographers I knew. As I stumbled toward them, all three of them looked at me and beckoned me, “Come in!”
I was grateful to have escaped the tear gas and grateful for the warmth. The highest temperature that day was below freezing. At one point, I looked down and noticed that condensation had frozen the dials and buttons on my camera.
Two other photographers and I headed to the roof and spent the next hour or more taking photos from above. We looked down at the scene of the shooting and could see the FBI conducting an investigation and lines of protesters and agents moving back and forth in three different directions.
For more than two hours, demonstrators marched north on Nicollet Street toward the scene of the Preti shooting, dispersed after federal agents fired tear gas, but then regrouped. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica
We watched as the federal presence arrived at the scene of the shooting and finished packing. They slowly retreated and fired tear gas at the demonstrators as they drove away.
We returned to the street. Protesters gathered on the next block, and a similar scene unfolded, this time with city and state police in attendance. “Why won’t you protect us?” someone shouted at them. Another protester tried to calm the crowd, but people became fed up and someone could be heard shouting, “Fuck pacifism.”
Tear gas was fired, people were dispersed, and police slowly retreated. Eventually, with no federal agents or police around, the atmosphere turned from chaotic to more somber.
A protester stands amidst tear gas in front of Cheapo Records on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. It’s just a few doors down from where Alex Preti was murdered. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica Protesters gathered near the scene where Preti was killed shortly after law enforcement withdrew from the scene. Cengiz Yar/ProPublica
As I took a moment to catch my breath, I realized that the final confrontation had taken place right in front of Cheapo Records, where I had gone to buy records on my birthday a few years ago. And all of the day’s events, including shootings, protests, and tear gas, unfolded along a stretch of Nicollet Avenue known as Eat Street, known for being home to many of the city’s best restaurants serving cuisine from around the world, showcasing the city’s diversity. I realized then that I would never feel the same walking down these streets.
People went to the scene of Alex Preti’s death. There was still yellow tape wrapped around it, and it was now wrapped carelessly around the trash can. Small blood stains were visible on the sidewalk.
They quietly began building monuments.
Mourners gather to commemorate Alex Preti. Peter DiCampo/ProPublica
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