‘Terrorist! Terrorist! Terrorist!’

From Minneapolis to Gaza, how does the press responsibly report killings when officials act in obvious bad faith? By looking out the window. 

At about 9am on Saturday in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse, approached an immigration agent and two civilians standing in the road. Pretti, wearing a cap and holding his phone aloft, appeared to be filming the encounter—a common sight in Minneapolis in recent weeks, as thousands of federal agents have descended on the city to conduct aggressive immigration raids. Residents have sought to document and bear witness to the actions of what Jacob Frey, the mayor, has described as an “occupying force.” Approaching the officers, Pretti attempted to get between them and their targets. Soon, he was being grabbed at and pepper-sprayed by multiple people and thrown to the ground, a swarm of seven agents standing over him as he struggled. During the skirmish, an agent removed a gun that seems to have come from Pretti’s pocket—at no point in footage taken by onlookers does he appear to be holding it—and, seconds later, an officer shoots Pretti at point-blank range. In those videos, taken from multiple angles, at least ten shots can be heard in five seconds as his body collapses on the pavement. “What the fuck did you just do?” one woman shouts.

In the hours that followed, Trump administration officials sought to paint Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” despite that description being plainly contradicted by the emerging video evidence. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said Pretti, who worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital, was “an assassin” trying to “murder federal agents.” Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol official in charge of agents in Minnesota, said it appeared Pretti wanted to “do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” The Department of Homeland Security posted an image on social media of the gun Pretti was allegedly carrying (Minnesota is an open-carry state for those with gun permits; local police said Pretti had a valid firearms permit). At a press conference, Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, claimed that “an agent fired defensive shots,” and said Pretti had come “with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation” and “committed an act of domestic terrorism. That’s the facts.”