When Renee Good was murdered two weeks ago, I, like many others, watched from multiple angles of her being shot by an ICE agent. Listened to him calling her a “fucking bitch.” Watched to see if the arguments of his being in danger were tangible. 

What’s worse is that her death wasn’t a surprise. Since the moment ICE began wide-scale operations in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, it became frighteningly clear that altercations were going to happen. That people were going to get hurt. 

The same government that promises to keep us safe has allowed poorly trained, uncompassionate individuals to wield firearms and play police. To threaten people with force, to teargas children, and to spray mace directly into the eyes of protestors. 

The notification about another fatal shooting made my heart sink. Again. It had happened again, in the same city that had been begging ICE agents to leave since the moment they arrived. 

The videos are online, like Goods’, taken by bystanders as the events unfolded. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse. He had been trying to protect a woman who an ICE agent had pushed down and was pepper spraying directly in her face. Agents piled onto him and discovered he had a firearm in his possession. They remove his gun. They hit him in the head. Then they shot him over nine times. 

Minnesota is an open-carry state. Police say Pretti had a permit to carry a firearm. The only thing Pretti had in his hands was his phone.

This is the country we are living in. People are afraid of ICE, not because they are immigrants, but because they could end up dead.

Both political parties are arguing in comments online about Pretti’s death, much of which is centered around Pretti possessing a firearm. If it was self-defense. If any of the situation was justifiable. 

He had a firearm because the Second Amendment allows him, and other American citizens, to possess them. He had a permit to carry it. But does it matter whether he had the permitted gun on him? Videos of the incident do not suggest that he was reaching for it. They took it from him and then shot. 

You don’t shoot someone you just disarmed and pepper sprayed nine times and get to call it self-defense. You can’t defend an amendment and then use it to justify someone’s death. 

But they did, and they will. Our president calls it a cover-up, blames the mayor and governor for calling off police to “protect the ICE agents.” If there have been “billions of dollars stolen,” then there is a time and a place to address it, investigations to be had. 

Pretti’s death has nothing to do with missing money. His death has everything to do with ICE.