On January 24, 2026, 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System and an American citizen, was fatally shot numerous times by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez, in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis during “Operation Metro Surge”, a joint operation by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants.
Video footage show Pretti using his cell phone to record federal agents' actions and when attempting to assist a woman who was violently shoved to the ground, was pepper sprayed and wrestled to the ground by six agents who disarmed him of his legally carried Sig Sauer P320 handgun from his holster. During the struggle, an officer yelled "He's got a gun!" multiple times causing two agents to withdraw their handguns and shoot him. At no point did Pretti attempt to use his weapon and an accidental discharge of his weapon by an agent is unsupported.
Pretti was part of an escalating resistance to the largest immigration enforcement ever carried out by the DHS and which has been characterized as political retribution by the Trump administration against a progressive Democratic stronghold. The encounter immediately sparked wide protests and political outcry across Minneapolis and beyond, as local officials, Pretti’s family, and community members criticized the federal narrative and called for independent investigations. Minnesota authorities have struggled to access key evidence because the FBI has denied sharing information from its probe with state investigators, leading to calls from the governor and civil rights groups for impartial oversight. The shooting came amid heightened tensions after the killing of Renée Good other federal agent-involved killings in the city, intensifying debates about immigration enforcement tactics, use of force, and civil liberties resulting in an announcement by Tom Homan, the White House border czar, to end of Operation Metro Surge on February 12.
The image is made without the use of AI from over 200 video stills taken by Stella Carlson (the woman in pink), Kayla Schultz (the woman in the white vehicle) and other undentified cell phone videos. It is a temporal depiction of the tragic event and should not be read as forensically accurate.
