The parents of Alex Pretti — the 37-year-old ICU nurse fatally shot by Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 — sat down for their first interview this week, calling the Trump administration's characterization of their son "sickening lies."
Michael and Susan Pretti spoke to The New York Times about their son, a licensed gun owner who worked at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System. According to video reviewed by multiple outlets, Pretti was filming federal agents conducting immigration enforcement near the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in the Whittier neighborhood when he moved to help an unnamed woman who had been shoved to the ground by an agent. Agents then surrounded Pretti, disarmed him, and fired multiple shots. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed he died in the emergency room from multiple gunshot wounds.
Susan Pretti put it plainly:
"He's my first born. He's the one that made me a mother. There was no reason he should have died that day."
The facts of this case are difficult, and they deserve to be handled with precision rather than narrative convenience.
Alex Pretti brought a firearm to the scene. He was a licensed gun owner, and under Minnesota state law, licensed gun owners are permitted to carry their weapons at protests. Bystander video does not appear to show him brandishing the weapon — he is seen holding a phone, not a gun. Agents removed the firearm from his waistband before another agent opened fire.
That sequence matters. Disarmed, then shot. Whatever threat assessment the agents made in the moment, the timeline captured on video raises serious questions about whether lethal force was justified after the weapon had already been secured.
FBI Director Kash Patel, whose agency is leading the investigation, offered a different frame:
"You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have a right to break the law."
President Trump echoed the point: "You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns."
Patel referenced "multiple magazines," though that claim has not been independently verified in reporting. The broader point from the administration is clear — armed civilians near federal operations create dangerous situations. That's a reasonable position in the abstract. But abstract positions don't settle specific cases, and in this specific case, the man was disarmed before he was killed.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration defended the involved agents and called Pretti a "domestic terrorist" who endangered the officers' lives.
His parents called these claims "sickening lies."
His father, Michael Pretti, recalled a phone conversation with Alex before the shooting, in which his son expressed frustration about the immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota:
"He said, 'Mom, they're kidnapping kids. Why would anybody do that? Why would people treat each other like that? That just doesn't make any sense. There's no reason to.'"
That's the voice of a man who was upset — not a man planning a terrorist act. You can disagree with his characterization of immigration enforcement and still recognize the gap between emotional frustration and domestic terrorism. The label matters. When the government calls a dead citizen a terrorist, it forecloses the kind of honest investigation the public deserves.
Michael Pretti described his son's final moments simply:
"His last act on this earth, his last thought, was to help this woman."
Susan Pretti added:
"It's who he was, every day. He's the same Alex he always was."
Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse at a VA hospital — a man who spent his professional life caring for veterans. His father called him "an exceptionally kind, caring man." His parents say they have received hundreds of letters from people across the country since his death.
None of that makes him right to bring a firearm to a tense scene. It does make him a person, not a political prop. And it makes the question of whether lethal force was appropriate after he was disarmed a question that deserves a real answer — not a press release.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted after the shooting found that 6 in 10 U.S. voters believed the agents were "not justified" in using lethal force against Pretti. Democratic lawmakers in Congress have stated they will not support a funding package that includes provisions for DHS, citing both Pretti's death and the earlier killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis in early January.
Congressional Democrats are using this tragedy to wage a funding war against DHS — which tells you their interest is leverage, not justice. Defunding the agency responsible for border enforcement doesn't honor Alex Pretti. It advances a policy agenda that existed long before anyone knew his name.
But the administration's posture carries its own risks. Immigration enforcement is essential. The border crisis is real. Public support for strong enforcement remains high. That support erodes when federal agents shoot a disarmed nurse and the government's first instinct is to label him a terrorist rather than transparently investigate what happened.
The FBI investigation will ultimately determine whether the use of force was legally justified. That investigation should be thorough, transparent, and unsparing in its conclusions — wherever they land.
Conservatives who support law enforcement should support accountability with equal conviction. The two are not in tension. Agents who operate within the law deserve full-throated defense. Agents who don't deserve the same scrutiny any citizen would face. That's not a concession to the left — it's the foundation that makes the right's defense of law enforcement credible in the first place.
Alex Pretti's parents buried their firstborn son. Whatever the investigation concludes, that fact sits at the center of this story — immovable, irreducible, and owed more than talking points from either side.
