The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month by federal agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was absolutely horrific. On Saturday, we saw another killing by ICE agents in the same city. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital. He went to the aid of a woman and was pushed to the ground by six masked men, disarmed and summarily executed. The videos, and there are several, are so shocking that most TV stations cut the images a few moments before one of the agents fires multiple shots into him while he’s helpless on the floor.
The government, as with Ms Good, immediately accused the victim of being a terrorist:
Noem: "This individual... committed an act of domestic terrorism." Alex Pretti was not a domestic terrorist. He was a nurse. And ICE officers murdered him, without any possible legal justification for doing so. The video evidence irrefutably demonstrates that.— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) 24 January 2026 at 22:56
Amazingly, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) has had to start legal proceedings to stop ICE from destroying evidence, and a judge has granted a temporary restraining order.
".....federal personnel purported to order Minnesota law enforcement to leave [the scene], denying them immediate access to critical evidence necessary to investigate crimes under state law" and "apparently seized cell phones and detained witnesses. It is unclear whether federal personnel otherwise processed the scene—let alone how carefully."
Detainees died of things like seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died in detention centres or field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals, but were still under ICE custody. In some cases, their families and lawyers have alleged that they died of neglect, after repeatedly trying and failing to get medical care.
ICE was holding 68,440 people in detention in mid-December; nearly 75% of them had no criminal convictions.
I want you to look at just one case
An Iranian woman entered the USA in 1999 along with her husband and applied for asylum because of religious persecution in Iran. She was denied asylum in 2008 but wasn't deported. Instead, the Dept of Homeland Security gave her a work authorisation permit and she was placed under an order of supervised and unsupervised parole, living in California.
She has complied with "every requirement and check-in requested by ICE" and has never violated any conditions of her parole.
The woman, Sonik Manaserian, now 70 years old, was arrested on 26 November last year.
Court documents reveal that a judge has determined that her "assigned deportation officer acknowledged that ICE had not tried to obtain travel documents that would allow Petitioner to be removed to Iran prior to her arrest. The United States does not have any diplomatic relations with Iran. There is no likelihood that removal will occur in the reasonably foreseeable future.
"In arresting Petitioner, ICE did not comply with its own regulations. Petitioner has a number of medical issues which cannot be addressed in the detention facility where she is located."
Mrs Manaserian argues that her release in 2008 was revoked in November without complying with the procedures set out in US law. She was detained without notice, was not given any explanation or reason for her detention, and was not provided with an interview. At one point, when transferring her from one detention centre in downtown Los Angeles to another in Adelanto, ICE lost her medication, and she wasn't allowed to attend a prescheduled medical appointment.
The US government "do not contest either of these claims—or, indeed, any of Petitioner’s other claims."
Their answer, given by an attorney representing the administration, is contained in a dozen words: "At this time, Respondents do not have an opposition argument to present.”
They don't deny any of it, don't offer any excuses, don't provide any additional facts or argue that different statutes or regulations should cover the case. The judge then summarises the facts in this damning section:
"Thus, it appears that Respondents arrested a chronically ill, 70-year-old woman, who came to this country to avoid religious persecution and applied for asylum, who has lived here peacefully for 26 years and complied with all check-in requirements and other conditions of release, who has no known criminal record and poses no threat to anyone, without notice or the process required by their own regulations and without any plan for removing her from this country, then kept her in detention for months without sufficient medical care—and they do not have any argument to offer to even try to justify these actions."
"Further, having acknowledged that they have no opposition to present to Petitioner’s habeas petition, have they voluntarily released her? No. Thus, Petitioner remains in custody, and her counsel, and the Court, are required to expend resources and effort to address a matter that Respondents either cannot be bothered to defend or realize is indefensible."
This is one small case out of hundreds of thousands across America. It will never make the headlines.
Trump and his sidekick Kristi Noem, who runs the DHS, claim they are deporting the 'worst of the worst' the murderers and the drug dealers and the criminal gangs. But this is the reality. When you pay armed thugs $100,000 a year as a starting salary and a bonus for every person they detain, you are not going to find them going after drug dealers, murderers and hardened criminals.
There is plenty of low-hanging fruit like Mrs Manaserian.
America will never be Made Great Again while one half of the country hates the other half enough to kill innocent protesters in the street or bang up elderly, chronically ill women in concentration camps for no good reason.
