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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance. But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain. He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again. He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

ICE told nurses this Minneapolis man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.”

What actually happened is that they pulled him from a car, beat him so viciously with a steel baton that he had 8 skull fractures, 5 life-threatening brain hemorrhages, and couldn’t remember he had a daughter.

SHOCKING FEDERAL COURT MOMENT: DOJ attorney Julie Le, "The system sucks, this job sucks" to Judge Jerry Blackwell who pressed her on why so many court orders are being ignored by ICE/Trump admin. She asked to be held in contempt just so she could get 24 hours of sleep. @FOX9

This is unreal. An AUSA talking like that in open court is about as close as you can come to a total breakdown. Never heard of anything like it.

Jonathan Ross, wanting a camera so bad he used his own phone to record himself killing Renee Good, should have put this argument to bed before it even woke up.

The ICE agent who killed Renee Good was proudly recording it and the CBP agents who killed Alex Pretti were captured from half a dozen angles and they still called Pretti a terrorist.

Bodycams aren’t going to do shit to stop them from executing people in the streets.

The pacification stage of counter insurgency on full display. Body cams mean nothing. We say you murder two people on camera and you have done nothing to arrest them. This is theater nothing else.

The Coming Ecological Cold War Decarbonization isn’t just about technology and markets—it’s a geopolitical revolution.

We are on the verge of a new Cold War, defined not by an ideological contest over the proper relationship between politics and the economy, but over the metabolic basis of modernity. Call it the Green Entente vs. the Axis of Petrostates. My latest: foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/01/e...

Renee Good and Alex Pretti are dead, in part, because of Lisa Demuth.

From the sound of this opinion any TRO or preliminary injunction in the state's case was doomed as soon as the 8th issued the stay in Tincher

Minnesotans will just do this indefinitely. We have the numbers, we’re well-resourced, almost unbelievably well organized, and on home turf. We’ve got a stubborn reputation to protect. And few will admit it, but it’s even kind of darkly exciting.

There is absolutely no outlasting us on this.

i fucking love my country minneapolis

Night raids are what killed Amir Locke.

I grew up with Alex Pretti The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

Federal deployment to Minneapolis "is steady state and expected to continue as planned," per Border Patrol memo leaked to me

The earlier incident started when he stopped his car after observing ICE agents chasing what he described as a family on foot, and began shouting and blowing his whistle, according to a source who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution. Pretti later told the source that five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back – an encounter that left him with a broken rib. The agents quickly released him at the scene. “That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source.

My gosh. Alex Pretti was notifying neighbors that Trump and Vance's agents were chasing a family. A mob of agents then tackled him and broke his rib.

He thought he was going to die.

Then the very next week, he came back out to support his neighbors.

And a mob of agents killed him.

Here's what ICE is up to in Northeast Minneapolis today. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Warning: video is hard to watch

📚pedagogy in black✊🏾 @RenyTure ICE is sexually abusing males in their custody by grabbing and bursting their testicles according to the ACLU and the guardian.

Given what happens with phone cameras recording, trying to imagine what happens inside the walls of these camps is terrifying

As I wrote today, this has been a consistent pattern, strategic retreat when things get too hot, return when it fades.
It's how grab 'em by the pussy and Jan 6 was handled. They're counting on memories being short.
prospect.org/2026/01/26/i...

i know this is about ai but i once again say it's teaching us a valuable lesson on the psychological effects of sycophancy

Imagine being a congressman from Minnesota and caring so little about what’s happening here that you just copy and paste talking points.

If you’re not writing your own statements and you’re not holding town halls, what exactly are we paying you for?

Gift link www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

The thing that they fear more than anything is our recognition of a shared humanity in the face of their evil

One of the best organizers I know in the Twin Cities has a great line, "We can't always take away the hurt, but we can take away the alone."

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

A video of Alex Pretti reading out the final salute of an unnamed veteran he cared for until the end of his life in the ICU, posted to Facebook by his son.

It's also about convincing you that they impose reality and that they are the final arbiters of truth. Hence the importance of continuing to name reality and truth ourselves, at every single turn, with all that is available to us.

Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti “We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti.

"Please get the truth out about our son."

Not untrained, not inexperienced.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him.

White. Hot. Rage.

Alex Pretti from his early days working at the VA

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

His name was Alex Pretti, he was 37. He was recording ICE, directing traffic, and helping up someone agents had shoved to the ground. They murdered him for it.