By now we’ve all seen it: the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse who worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. It happened on Saturday as the Trump administration’s violent siege in Minneapolis continued to escalate. Pretti had been legally filming ICE agents’ operations on his phone. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has claimed that Pretti, a legal gun owner, was holding a firearm and attacked the officers before they fatally shot him. Video footage clearly contradicts the administration’s story, just as in the case of Renee Nicole Good’s killing earlier this month.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs,” Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, said in a statement, shortly after his killing. “He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.”
They added, “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
The loss of one of their own has rocked the health-care community. National Nurses United, the largest registered-nurses union in the nation, has called for a week of action to honor Pretti and others whom federal immigration officers have killed. FIGS Scrubs, an apparel brand for health-care workers, posted a tribute to Pretti on Instagram and donated $25,000 to a GoFundMe supporting his family. Below, four nurses talked with The Cut about the impact of Pretti’s killing on their community and why they consider him a hero.
“I genuinely feel bad when I cause someone pain. How can they not?”
— Kathye Hamilton, an oncology nurse in Virginia
The loss of any nurse, especially this way, is really demoralizing. Alex was 37, and he’d been a nurse for five years — it was a second profession for him like it is for me. I became a nurse in my early 30s. I didn’t know Alex, but I can tell you it takes a very special person to go into the ICU. It’s not just technically the skills that you must have been really good at to do that kind of work, but you need a real fortitude and a caring nature to take that on for as long as Alex did. ICU nurses will have only one or two patients, because those patients are obviously intensive and they just need a lot of care. You need to really be able to predict very subtle changes and respond to that in order to keep your patient alive. Additionally, ICU nurses have to have difficult conversations with families about end-of-life care, about how we’re doing everything we can but they’re probably not gonna make it. Alex was probably good at de-escalating, which is something we’re not seeing from immigration agents. He was probably really good at managing people’s emotions, and I think you can maybe see some of that in the videos: He’s trying to help the person, but also trying to document what’s happening and probably trying to talk down the officers. It looks like these guys are just itching to harm people, and that’s so antithetical to everything nurses do.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and when I’m taking care of cancer patients, we don’t ask who they voted for. I don’t care about that. What I wanna do is get rid of your cancer. That’s the main thing. I just wanna take care of you and help you get back to your life.
It’s really frustrating to me how law enforcement, in general, close ranks around each other when this sort of shooting happens. We nurses don’t do that. You will never hear a nurse defending serial killer Charles Cullen. We’re all glad that he’s serving time and will be in jail for the rest of his life. Erin Strotman, a neonatal intensive care nurse out of Richmond, recently pled guilty after facing child-abuse charges because she was harming infants. None of us is defending that behavior. That is not what nurses do. And yet when cops or immigration officers kill people, they just say, “Well, you don’t understand what it’s like for us.”
I texted with some colleagues about Alex murder’s, and immediately the first two people responded with, “Fuck ICE.” One person said that those of us that choose health care do so out of compassion and a desire to help people, not harm people, so now we’re wondering why ICE agents are choosing to do what they do. Personally, when I stick someone with a needle to draw blood from them and they flinch, I apologize. I genuinely feel bad that I hurt people at my job, even when these are things people consented to. I genuinely feel bad when I cause someone pain. How can they not? Another person in the chat asked if it was really necessary to shoot that many times — if you need to shoot so many times, you are not in control of yourself. Nurses can’t behave that way. So why can they? And there was a colleague who said most of us would do the same as Alex did, trying to help people to get out of unsafe situations.
I hear that ICE and CBP are upset that they’re getting confused for each other — it wasn’t ICE that killed Alex, it was CBP. But if everyday people are having to learn the difference between an administrative warrant and a judicial warrant, if they learn the difference between these agencies, it sounds like you’re arguing: “We’re not the Gestapo. We’re the SS.” But I don’t care what kind of Nazi you are. I just want it to stop.
“I see Alex as a true patriot.”
— Sutton Crank, a psychiatric nurse in New York
I have been a nurse for eight years. I was definitely drawn to the profession because I’ve always been very justice motivated and this was a way to serve, to give back to my community. I initially saw the video of Alex’s murder on social media. After Renee Good’s case, seeing this second murder happen was obviously horrific.
I’m a psychiatric nurse, and I have been specifically trained on crisis de-escalation. We’re all trained professionals who learn how to do our jobs without a gun. I’m a small girl, and I’m trained to do this in my nursing unit with patients in crises. There’s a systematic failure of not equipping immigration officers for de-escalation. As nurses and law-enforcement officers, we’re both public servants who protect life in our community. In moments of crisis, we all have a duty to exercise restraint and protect others. We’re expected to enter unsafe or emotionally charged situations and put the well being of others ahead of our own. There was a failure of that in the murder of Alex Pretti.
I feel like it is a moral obligation to respond powerfully against Alex’s murder. Speaking to the issue is definitely the first step, but I think we need to mobilize. We need to put practice in the action. And we need to have an action plan for when this inevitably shows up on our front doorstep.
My colleagues have expressed outrage about his death. A lot of them are also scared: I have a lot of colleagues from other nations, and ICE being a presence is scary. I had a conversation with my partner recently about how we just both feel so unprepared for if we were to encounter a situation like this in our community. We need to have a game plan in place. If this happens to a neighbor, like, what do we do? How do we step in? I, of course, am trying to use my crisis-de-escalation knowledge. I’m also thinking, My partner who’s a male needs to stay back and let me get involved. Females are viewed as less of a threat. I’m just thinking about my action plan.
What Alex did by defending a woman on the street is something that I would expect any just person to do. And, not to be hyperbolic, but Alex being an ICU nurse was a hero in his career. When I saw the video circulating of Alex reading out a final salute to a veteran that had passed, it was gut-wrenching to me. I immediately was outraged and crying. It definitely felt personal. There is a betrayal that happened when Alex, as a public servant, was killed by masked ICE officers. After watching the VA video of Alex, I’ve been thinking that the word patriotism has been warped into something different, but I see Alex as a true patriot. And now he’s become a martyr.
“What’s to stop one of these nutjobs if I’m there at a vigil?”
— Emma*, a nurse in Florida
I’ve been a nurse since 2012, and my husband was a small-arms specialist in the service. When we watched the video of Alex being killed, we both started to cry. Thankfully, our daughter wasn’t in the room. My husband said, “This isn’t the country I fought for. This goes against every oath I’ve ever taken.” It was a gut punch to then learn Alex was a nurse and that not only was he a nurse, he was a nurse who worked in the VA. My husband has had cancer this past year. It’s been a horrible year, and the VA has been a lifeline. My family would have been screwed without the VA.
I don’t think I’ve been so unhinged and angry on the internet in a long time as I was this weekend. I had friends reaching out to me, checking in on me and asking, “Are you okay?” No, I’m not okay. Obviously, this is nothing new to minority populations. This is nothing new to anybody who has been in this situation. But seeing this man — who, obviously, you can see him trying to protect this woman — be killed and then immediately vilified as this horrible, evil, bad person who was coming at agents … it’s like, Motherfucker. How does anybody believe that’s what happened that morning?
On Threads, nursing groups were talking about how the administration is desperately trying to dig up anything on this man, going through supervisors’ emails from six years ago because one time they had an interaction with this person. It has turned everything so much uglier in a way that is something that you read about in books. I’m still trying to grapple with it.
Someone in my comments said, “Well, he fucked around and found out.” And I was thinking to myself, “You can’t have it both ways. You cannot have this old ‘a good guy with a gun’ theory about men who do the right thing protecting women and then here is a man protecting a woman from another man — who’s obviously doing horrible things and about to hurt her — and they shot him in the back for it.” These people are saying, “Well, you know, he shouldn’t have been there with the gun.” Again, which one is it? Like, take Kyle Rittenhouse. He showed up to a protest with an AR-15 rifle he didn’t even own or legally have the ability to possess, went out in public with it, and murdered people. He got a GoFundMe out of it, was found not guilty, and became a right-wing influencer. Meanwhile, Alex was out here doing none of the above, and the Trump administration calls him a “domestic terrorist.”
Yesterday afternoon, a bunch of people, including nurses, were meeting at the local VA to have a vigil outside the gates. I did not go, unfortunately, because I had to go get my kid, but also because I don’t feel safe. There are too many crazies out there. I had a fellow mom tell me that she would have shot Renee Good herself when we got into a conversation about this. I was like, “Are you fucking for real right now? Did we not watch the same thing?” And she was like, “Well, she shouldn’t have been there.” In my head I was thinking, This is another mother. I have been kind to her children; her kids have been to my house. And she’s telling me she would have shot her. So if I’m there at a vigil, what’s to stop one of these nutjobs from taking me out and my daughter not having a mother? This situation has made me both incredibly angry and yet also afraid in a way that I’m angry about. I shouldn’t be afraid, but I am. And I hate that I feel this way.
“I know that that could have been me or any one of my nursing colleagues.”
— Jess Hsu, a nurse in Georgia
I was actually at the hospital this past weekend, working two shifts in a row. I had learned about the killing earlier on Saturday but it wasn’t until we were in our huddle, which is what we do at shift change, that I took a quick glance at my phone and found out Alex was an ICU nurse. It made me so angry that nobody else was really saying anything. I don’t know if they were uninformed or if there’s just this need to generally try to stay apolitical at work. A lot of things make me angry about it: It was an extrajudicial murder by state-sanctioned actors just in broad daylight on the street. It’s infuriating when anyone gets killed, whether they’re a nurse or not.
Something that makes me particularly angry is how silent the health-care community has been. Large entities like universities and hospital systems have a lot of influence and power. While individual nurses and doctors will speak out on things, these institutions at large will not. A member of our own community was killed while standing up for his neighbors, and then health care can’t stand with him. That’s really disappointing.
It’s hard to discuss at work and still get your patient care done. But what’s so frustrating is that this dialogue really does impact our patients and the work that we do. My patient population consists of a lot of immigrants and refugees. Maybe a third of our patients don’t speak any English, so I know that our patients will be affected by immigration enforcement. Our health-care workers are also affected; so many techs, doctors, and nurses at my hospital will be personally impacted by this. To not be able to discuss it openly at work without feeling ostracized is such a bummer. I sometimes feel like a lone voice.
In addition to being angry about Alex’s murder, I’m also really sad. He was my husband’s age and even kind of looked like him. I admire Alex’s actions. It’s hard to not take things a little personally when I know that that could have been me or any one of my fellow colleagues.
Alex’s death has made some of my family, friends, and co-workers more nervous for themselves and even for myself. My husband really doesn’t want me to get any more involved at protests and rallies because it’s becoming increasingly unsafe. But I’ve been radicalized for a long time, and things like this killing just solidify how I feel about the state of our nation: We’re devolving into a fully fascist, militarized police state. The United States has always had racism, misogyny, and bigotry that we’ve had to grapple with, but I think a lot of people once felt safer to exercise their First Amendment rights. It’s becoming more difficult to exercise your First Amendment rights under fascism.
Still, this situation has galvanized me personally. What’s happening with ICE raids right now is making me wanna get a lot more involved in collective-action projects, mutual aid, protesting on the street. I’m sure they’re coming to Atlanta, so the only way that I can process all these negative emotions that I’m having is to pour that into action. We really have to band together and prepare for what’s next. Only the people will save us at this point.
Emma’s name has been changed to protect her identity. These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
