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By Andrew Stanton
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Alex Pretti’s former boss, Dr. Aasma Shaukat, responded to attempts to “demonize” the ICU nurse fatally shot by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis in an interview with Newsweek.
Why It Matters
Pretti was shot by a U.S. Border Patrol official on January 24, making him the second American citizen to be fatally shot by an officer amid protests over President Donald Trump's administration’s heightened immigration enforcement in the Minnesota city.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Pretti "approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin previously told Newsweek that the department viewed it as a "situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
However, videos verified by various news outlets show that Pretti was holding a phone in his right hand, with nothing in his left hand, before he was shot, contradicting those claims. Pretti was legally conceal-carrying a handgun at the time of his death.
His death has drawn bipartisan scrutiny toward the administration’s operations in Minnesota, with many critics saying the shooting was unjustified. The agents involved in the shooting have been placed on leave, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened a civil rights investigation into his death.
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What To Know
Shaukat told Newsweek that she hired Pretti as a research assistant at the Minneapolis VA in 2014, when he was looking to gain some experience in health care.
“He was very earnest and just very enthusiastic about contributing to patient care,” she said. “So we gave him a chance, we took him on. We trained him. He learned really well, he was a really valued team member.”
In 2019, Pretti became interested in going into nursing school while still working with Dr. Shaukat, who wrote a recommendation letter for him. During this time, she said he would bring "funny stories" to work from his side gig as a pizza delivery driver. He never expressed any "radical or crazy thoughts" and was "very honest and hard-working," she added.
He returned to the same hospital, where he “rose the ranks in nursing all the way to his ICU position,” she said.
“That was really good for him and he literally just had his whole life ahead of him when this tragic event happened,” she said, describing him as a “good kid.”
Pretti found "deeper meaning" working in health care, particularly when it came to working with veterans, who are a more vulnerable population because of social and mental health challenges, she said.
He was always open about things he cared about, including the environment and helping his community, she said. Attending a peaceful protest was “very much like” him, as his community in south Minneapolis would have been the “epicenter” of what was happening, she added.
“I could see him at protests. I could also see him coming to the aid of a woman that looked like she had fallen, was in harm's way, or if it looked like the agent was going to assault her or something," she said. "So I could see him kind of coming to a rescue.”
What happened afterward was a “complete tragedy,” she said. She responded to the administration’s rhetoric about Pretti, saying that “the Alex I knew was none of those things.”
“All these efforts to kind of demonize him and make him some domestic terrorist with some ulterior motive don't really fit the Alex we knew,” she said.
She said she does not believe he was someone who would have ill intent or would have been looking for trouble.
“His life was dedicated to actually healing and taking care of people, so the profile just doesn't fit,” she said.
His legacy should be that people remember their rights to protest, help their community and have empathy toward what is happening to fellow citizens, she said. She added that she is hopeful the situation in Minneapolis will improve after the administration sent Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, into the city to oversee operations.
“People are so polarized," she said. "This should not be a polarizing issue—protecting our communities, working with them and helping if there are other policy issues that need to be carried out should actually kind of work together and shouldn't really be in extremes. So I'd love for us to find some kind of a middle ground where everybody finds peace and gets to do what they want to accomplish.”
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump, in a post to Truth Social early Friday morning: “Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces. It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
Steve Schleicher, an attorney representing Alex Pretti's parents, previously said in a statement provided to Newsweek: "A week before Alex was gunned down in the street – despite posing no threat to anyone – he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents. Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan 24.”
**Alex Pretti's parents previously said in a joint statement: "**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. He had 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."
What Happens Next
Pretti’s death remains under investigation while the administration has faced growing backlash over the situation. Democrats in Congress have sought to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the deaths of Pretti and Renee Good, who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on January 7.
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