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    ‘We’re fighting for the soul of the country’: how Minnesota residents came together to face ICE

    Networks created after police killed George Floyd were reactivated to challenge Trump’s mass deportation policyCory never expected he’d spend hours each day driving around after immigration agents, videotaping their moves. The south Minneapolis resident is “not the type of person to do this”, he said.The dangers of what he’s doing, even after the killings of two observers, largely stay out of his mind when he’s watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – even when he’s gotten hit with pepper spray. In quieter moments, it occurs to him that agents likely know where he lives. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old whom agents killed while he was filming them, “100% could have been me”, Cory said. Continue reading… More

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    Pho, handwarmers, grief and loss: a week on the block where Alex Pretti was killed

    Residents line up to support businesses that became refuges from teargas, and refresh the memorial dailyNothing is quite as it used to be along Nicollet Avenue.The spot where Alex Pretti was gunned down by federal agents has been cordoned off by orange stakes and caution tape, appearing like a giant gash along the block between 26th and 27th streets. Continue reading… More

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    Nurses remember Alex Pretti and vow to ‘bring the care our patients need’

    Flowers and candles laid by VA building in Washington as killing reverberates through nursing communityFor Nolan Lee, it felt like Minnesota in Washington DC on Wednesday night. Despite the most extreme cold in 150 years, about a thousand people gathered in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) headquarters, a block from the White House, to remember Alex Pretti and demand an end to funding for US immigration and border agencies.The killings by federal agents of Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a veterans hospital, and Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, rocked Minneapolis and reverberated throughout the nation, with the future of US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – up for debate as a key funding bill that would increase the agency’s spending failed to pass the US Senate on Thursday. Continue reading… More