All state laws ultimately rest on the threat of violent enforcement. Libertarians have long been making this point.
The killing of Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is hard to defend for anyone who watched the video of his horrifying slaying.
Only a few of the most rapid anti-immigration hawks on social media are still arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were in the right when they shot a restrained, unarmed Pretti multiple times.
Even President Donald Trump has walked back some of his immediate slanders of Pretti. The administration is now seemingly making moves to get its operation in Minneapolis under control.
Lest they cede too much ground to anti-ICE protestors, more sophisticated conservatives are saying that while the Pretti shooting was regrettable or unnecessary, the 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse would still be alive if he had merely chosen to stay home instead of interfering with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
Hear political commentator Megyn Kelly say that it’s easy to avoid being shot by federal agents if only one stays indoors.
Megyn Kelly: « I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pretti but I don’t. You know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. »
pic.twitter.com/CNZkoUmXj9
Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 27, 2026
Or witness National Review’s Rich Lowry’s frustration on X that protesters’ resistance to ICE is generating more and more on-camera abuses by ICE agents that undermine the legitimacy of their mission.
The Left is in a cycle of constant self-radicalization—the resistance to ICE creates the predicate for tragedies that are used to justify ever-more resistance and the demand for the de-facto nullification of federal immigration law in Minneapolis
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) January 25, 2026
There’s something trivially true about both sentiments when applied to Pretti and Renee Good, the woman shot in her car by an ICE agent a few weeks prior.
Had both stayed home and out of ICE’s way, they’d still be alive. Had neither been shot, the surge in support for abolishing ICE and the public’s general souring on the administration’s immigration crackdown would not have happened.
Their true statements still involve a remarkable amount of blame-shifting from perpetrator to victim, particularly in Pretti’s case.
