Friend –
There are moments when words feel painfully inadequate. This is one of them.
A man who spent his life caring for others is dead. A family is grieving a loss that should never have happened. A community is once again left shaken and asking how this could happen.
Just weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, federal immigration agents have taken another life in the same city. Alex Pretti was thirty-seven years old. He was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital. He showed up to protest because he believed something was deeply wrong with what was happening in his community and across the country. He refused to look away.
Instead of going home that night, he was shot and killed by federal agents.
This was the all too predictable result of agencies that have been allowed to operate with immense power and no accountability.
When federal agents know there will not be consequences, they act as if there are no limits. When violence is excused, denied, or justified instead of being confronted, it escalates. That is what we are witnessing now. Two lives lost in a matter of weeks. Two families left to carry unimaginable grief. And still, no meaningful action to stop it.
The House-passed DHS funding bill before the Senate ignores this reality. It would send more money to ICE and Border Patrol without requiring real reforms, real oversight, or real accountability for the violence we are seeing unfold.
Passing this bill would be a moral failure. The Senate must reject it.
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The Senate still has a choice.
Senate Democrats have said they will not advance a funding bill that fails to rein in DHS abuses. It's imperative that we weigh in now to reinforce that message. All Senators must feel the full weight of public grief and outrage over DHS violence and abuse. Silence gives cover to inaction. Pressure forces accountability.
This cannot be about politics as usual. It must be about whether Congress says no to funding for agencies that have shown, again and again, the willingness to use lethal force without transparency, restraint, or consequence. It is about whether the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good will be treated as tragic warnings or quietly absorbed into the background noise of another budget fight.
If the Senate allows this bill to move forward without accountability, it sends a chilling message to federal agents on the ground that nothing will change and that no one is watching. It tells families that their grief will be acknowledged, then ignored. It tells communities that their lives are expendable.
That cannot be allowed to happen.
Demand reforms that protect lives. Demand oversight with real consequences. Demand action before more families are forced to mourn.
With grief and resolve,
People For the American Way
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