by Edward Ring
Amid political chaos over immigration enforcement, the death of Alex Pretti shows how emotion, misinformation, and despair are pushing ordinary Americans into tragedy.
“I remember how sweet it was that, as his dog was more elderly,
less mobile, he’d be willing to carry him down to the yard to get some
fresh air and to enjoy the outdoors. His dog would lay down and Alex
would sit with him and pet him for long periods of time. He was very
caring, you could tell.”
– Quote included in CBS News report, January 25, 2026
It is difficult to add much to the polarized discussions surrounding the death of Alex Pretti during his confrontation with ICE officers on January 24. We can join the chorus to explain how this man shouldn’t have brought a loaded gun to a protest. We can remind skeptics that most of these ICE raids would not be necessary if law enforcement were permitted to turn criminals over to federal agents at the courthouse instead of forcing them to raid apartment complexes.
There’s a lot we can say to emotionally distance ourselves from this individual tragedy. But the policy debate that has spilled into the streets of Democrat-run cities is running on emotion, not reason. The people filling the streets of Minneapolis aren’t weighing the consequences of ignoring the growing influence of international criminal gangs, especially in sanctuary cities. They aren’t mapping migration demographics on spreadsheets and cross-referencing that data with the projected growth in welfare expenditures.
The flash mobs impeding ICE agents across the nation certainly don’t believe that America’s mass migration pipeline is a deliberate strategy to import voters who will accept a lower standard of living than heritage Americans, will work for lower wages, will accept government corruption as a way of life, will take government benefits for granted, and will reliably vote for any politician that promises to increase those benefits.
Moreover, the people who are in the streets protesting ICE in Minnesota are either unaware or dismissive of the fact that Keith Ellison, Tim Walz, and Jacob Frey are part of a corrupt political machine, formed through a parasitic symbiosis whereby the increasing population of people dependent on government generates an increase in the population of government workers to support them. Unchecked, this is a model that ratchets entire economies into insolvency. And now these three politicians, and the system they’re part of, have moved from corruption toward criminality. Focusing on immigrant communities, they trade government benefits for campaign contributions while knowingly ignoring fraudulent applications of those benefits to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
The riots in Minneapolis are allegedly being funded by individuals and organizations that share an agenda to expand immigration and oppose President Trump. Soros’ Open Society Foundation, individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and leftist unions, including SEIU and AFL-CIO, are all alleged to be funding the rioters. At the same time, Minnesota Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey are, at the very least, tacitly encouraging the protests.
None of these events are helped by the internet, of course, a tool that has the twin attributes of both identifying and aggregating every inflammatory video taken, everywhere, and then distributing those videos to literally everyone with a smartphone. All of this has given the protests a scale and visibility that is far beyond what may have occurred without so much financial and political support.
But Alex Pretti didn’t think about all those things. He lived alone. He worked long hours. He’d been divorced in recent years. His dog, a companion through the divorce, died just one year ago. We may speculate as to his mental health and his political ideology, but it is reasonable to assume he was not a malevolent person. Friends and family say he grieved deeply for his dog, according to news reports. It’s not hard to empathize with this man’s pain.
So set aside for a moment the dark motivations of the people who are political opportunists and economic scammers. Take away the percentage of protesters who are motivated by hatred for heritage Americans and American traditions, and take away the stone-cold communists and anti-American extremists. Take away the conniving ghouls who manipulated Alex Pretti’s emotions and exploited his death. We are still left with a large contingent of good people who see masked, heavily armed soldiers breaking down doors of apartments or dragging people out of their cars. Their concerns are amplified by biased news reports on the alphabet networks that highlight the worst-looking examples of possible excess by ICE agents and National Guard troops while failing to provide the slightest context or reasons why these sweeps are unfortunate necessities. These are people who may see the political choices we face with our immigration policies in the abstract but nonetheless prioritize the visceral images of parents and children being rounded up and taken into custody.
I believe Alex Pretti was one of these good people.
None of this is to suggest the actions being taken by ICE and the National Guard aren’t necessary. We must root out and expel international crime networks, prosecute official corruption, and recognize that we can’t continue to accept economic migrants by the tens of millions, or we lose our country. Nonetheless, I can imagine myself in Alex Pretti’s shoes. I can imagine myself tenderly caring for my aged dog in his last days, saying goodbye to an utterly devoted companion that was by my side through years of adventures and then with me through the pain of a divorce, never wavering, and now saying goodbye. I can feel his grief and imagine how his emotions, already fragile, must have been further stressed at the sight of so much pain in the world. I can see how he may have become overwrought as tensions escalated on the streets of his city, fed by uncompromising rhetoric from both sides.
Alex Pretti should not have brought a gun to the protests. He paid for that error in judgment with his life. I won’t attempt to dissect the particulars of how he died or try to make a case for whether or not the actions taken by the men who shot him were justified. But I grieve for Alex Pretti and hope to again live in a nation where men like him are not driven to despair by the events they see all around them.
Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the
director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center,
which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is
the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021)
and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/28/the-tragedy-of-alex-pretti/
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