Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal immigration agents while trying to help people in his community.
On January 24, 2026, the 37-year-old VA intensive care nurse and union member was killed during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis after stepping in as chaos unfolded around his neighbors. Accounts from witnesses and reporting in the days that followed made clear he was trying to assist people caught up in the confrontation when agents fired, ending the life of a man whose profession and character were defined by helping others.
His killing sent shockwaves through the labor movement and drew sharp condemnation from national union leadership.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement, “The AFL-CIO mourns the senseless killing of another Minneapolis resident by federal agents. Alex Jeffrey Pretti was a VA intensive care unit nurse and a member of AFGE Local 3669—a brother in our union family.” She added that America’s unions were joining calls for ICE to leave Minnesota “before anyone else is hurt or killed.”
Pretti wasn’t just a nurse — he was a union member who spent his career caring for veterans in their most critical moments at the VA. Colleagues remember him as steady, compassionate, and always willing to step in when someone needed help. That instinct did not turn off when he left the hospital. It carried into his neighborhood and his community.
Union leaders and coworkers have been blunt in their anger, arguing that his death was not an accident but the result of aggressive enforcement tactics that put communities directly in harm’s way. To them, the fact that a healthcare worker — someone trained and committed to saving lives — was killed while trying to help others stands as a devastating indictment of the conditions that led to that moment.
Alex Pretti lived as a helper. He died as one too. And for many in the labor movement, his killing has become a symbol of the human cost when fear and force replace humanity and restraint.
