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By Jesus Mesa
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Voters in Minneapolis and Houston left "I Voted" stickers this Election Day at memorials for people killed by federal immigration agents this year.
Dozens of stickers were left at the Minneapolis memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens fatally shot by federal agents in January. In Houston, more than 1,000 stickers had been placed by late October on a memorial for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican construction contractor killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in July.
Both Minneapolis memorials featured portraits of Good and Pretti, surrounded by flowers and messages criticizing ICE and President Donald Trump. The Houston memorial also drew handwritten notes, many in Spanish. Some read "Por usted" ("For you"), while others said, "You didn't deserve this." Mexican and U.S. flags and portraits of Salgado Araujo were also displayed at the site.
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Why Are People Placing 'I Voted' Stickers at Memorials?
In Houston, it started with Salgado Araujo's oldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, who voted on October 19, the first day of early voting in Texas, then went to Canal Street and put his sticker on the plywood memorial marking where his father was killed.
More voters came in the days that followed, some because they had seen video of it on social media. Axios Houston reported that residents were dedicating their votes to Salgado Araujo and to immigrants who cannot vote themselves.
Reports from Minneapolis on Tuesday did not identify an organized effort behind the stickers there, or say whether voters were following Houston's example.
What Happened to Renee Good?
Good, 37, a writer and mother of three, was shot dead on January 7 on Portland Avenue in south Minneapolis as thousands of federal agents moved into the Twin Cities for Operation Metro Surge.
Video of the encounter shows officers telling her to get out of her SUV as one reached through the driver's window. She turned the wheel away from ICE officer Jonathan Ross and began to drive, and he fired. The SUV crashed into a parked car about 140 feet away.
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An autopsy commissioned by her family found three gunshot wounds, including one to the head, and a graze.
Then-Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a "domestic terrorist" without providing evidence and said Ross acted in self-defense. DHS later said he suffered internal bleeding. Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said days later that he saw no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.
Good's wife, Becca Good, and her brother, Brent Ganger, filed federal lawsuits on October 1 against the U.S. government, Ross and senior officials who led the crackdown. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty's office is still weighing state charges.
What Happened to Alex Pretti?
Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was killed on January 24, 17 days after Good.
He was on Nicollet Avenue that morning, using his phone to record agents making an arrest, according to an ABC News review of five verified bystander videos. About three minutes later, an officer shoved a civilian toward him, pepper-sprayed him and pulled him into the street.
Several agents pinned Pretti down, and one repeatedly struck him. A preliminary Customs and Border Protection (CBP) report says an agent yelled, "He's got a gun!" The videos appear to show an officer pulling a gun from Pretti's waist about a second before the first shot. A forensic audio analysis done for ABC News found 10 shots in under five seconds.
The CBP report says a Border Patrol agent and a CBP officer fired. Pretti was pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center at 9:32 a.m., and the county medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide.
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Noem said at the time that Pretti approached agents with a handgun and attacked them. However, the videos that resurfaced in social media did not appear to support that claim, and he did not appear to draw the weapon, which Minneapolis police said he could legally carry. The CBP report does not say he reached for a gun.
Minnesota sued the Justice Department in March for access to evidence. Moriarty said in July that federal officials had begun sharing it, and later said in a court filing that the cooperation had stopped.
"What we have been treated to is cruelty," Michael Pretti, his father, said on October 27 at the parents' first news conference. The Justice Department says its investigation is ongoing.
Who Was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo?
Salgado Araujo, 52, had lived in the U.S. for about 35 years and built homes around Houston. He owned a small construction business, had no criminal record and was the father of three sons, all U.S. citizens. His family said he was close to finishing the process of obtaining legal status.
On the morning of July 7, he was driving his crew to a job site when unmarked ICE vehicles followed his white van through the Magnolia Park neighborhood. His family has said he may have thought he was being robbed.
DHS first said he rammed an ICE vehicle and "weaponized his vehicle" against an officer, who fired in self-defense. DHS later acknowledged he was not the person agents were seeking. U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz's preliminary account said agents were looking for two Guatemalan men linked to a similar van, and it did not repeat the claim that Salgado Araujo hit a federal vehicle.
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Reitz said an officer fired once as the van moved forward with an agent partly inside or beside it.
The Texas Tribune identified the shooter as ICE agent Gregory Feathers. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Friday that his office hopes to finish its investigation before Thanksgiving, then present the case to the grand jury that indicted another ICE agent, Mario Alberto Morales, last week in an unrelated Houston case.
How Did the Shootings Affect the White House?
The White House changed course in Minneapolis after Pretti's death.
Two days after Pretti died, Trump sent border czar Tom Homan to take over the operation from Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who was returned to his former post in El Centro, California. Noem announced body cameras for agents in Minnesota, and Homan said on February 4 that 700 agents would leave the state.
On February 12, Homan said the surge was over. "I have proposed and President Trump has concurred that this surge operation conclude," he told reporters. He cited coordination with local law enforcement and the operation's success, and he said agents had made more than 4,000 arrests.
Polls moved against Trump. A Reuters/Ipsos survey taken January 23 to 25 put Trump's approval on immigration at 39 percent, then the lowest of his second term and down from 50 percent in February 2025, and 58 percent said ICE had gone too far.
Trump fired Noem on March 5 and named Senator Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, to replace her, after mounting criticism of both the immigration crackdown and her disaster response.
Minneapolis was a turning point in the backlash and Republicans' immigration message has since fractured. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said this week that picking her was a mistake.
"She wanted these conflicts," he said of Noem. "I think she wanted because it created news and created conflict. That's not the way you do it."
The slide kept going. Reuters/Ipsos had Trump's immigration approval at 41 percent among U.S. adults earlier in January, before it dropped to 39. It hit 38 percent in mid-February and 36 percent in September, when 55 percent disapproved.
Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin polling average put him at positive 7 points on immigration when he took office in January 2025. It now has him about 12 points underwater, still better than his numbers on trade and the economy.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Edward T. Cummins
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