Official Statement from the Jamestown Justice Coalition

Alex Pretti was killed during an ICE enforcement operation. This was not immigration enforcement. This was Americans with guns firing repeatedly at another American. Alex Pretti was a U.S. citizen, killed by other U.S. citizens acting under federal authority. When Americans are killed by their own government, we should call it what it is: state violence.

ICE’s presence itself is the harm. Armed federal agents do not make communities safer. They bring fear, escalation, and death. If ICE was not there, Alex Pretti would be alive. Renée Good would be alive. 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, with his bunny hat and spiderman backpack, would still be home with his family, where he belongs. These outcomes are not accidents. They are the predictable result of deploying violence as policy.

Now, even in death, Alex Pretti, is being labeled a “domestic terrorist,” just as Renée Good was. These labels are not about truth. They are about dehumanization. They exist to make extreme violence easier to justify and to shift blame away from the state actors who carried it out.

This is the second U.S. citizen killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in just weeks. That is not enforcement. That is escalation.

ICE is operating as an occupying force in American cities, trampling on constitutional rights, treating neighborhoods as hostile territory and residents as expendable. This is the same imperialism this administration has shown abroad, now turned inward. The violence we are seeing is not rogue or accidental. It has been sanctioned from the top, encouraged by a president who has made fear, force, and punishment central to his agenda.

This is Americans shooting Americans. And it must stop.

Jamestown Justice Coalition Board