Alex Pretti Murder Shows What Happens When We Fail to Push Back
2 min read
Photo by Manny Sandoval: Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice Executive Director Javier Hernandez condemning ICE at a Jan. 28th, 2026 press conference in San Bernardino.
By Javier Hernandez, Executive Director, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice
This is not an isolated tragedy. It is the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks, following the killing of Renée Good, and part of a broader pattern under the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration operations. These actions, arrests without transparency, aggressive confrontations, and now deadly force, are tearing at the threads of our social fabric and threatening the very rights Americans are supposed to hold dear.
Unfortunately, the deadly violence we’ve seen in Minneapolis didn’t come out of nowhere; we saw similar tactics here in the Inland Empire when ICE and federal agents shot at a family vehicle with two US Citizens inside in San Bernardino, making it clear our communities are either being used as a training ground, or that these violent methods have become standard practice among federal forces.
There is no room for quiet endorsement, for equivocation, for sitting on the fence. The line has already been drawn, and it was drawn by those who would use federal power to terrorize communities rather than protect them. Every time a federal agency fires a weapon instead of de-escalating a situation, whether it’s in Minneapolis, Riverside, San Bernardino, or anywhere else, the boundaries of unacceptable state violence shift, and the human cost grows.
Those deaths are not abstract statistics. They are the direct outcome of a political practice that devalues human life and normalizes brute force.
We must push back and we must do it boldly. That means defunding ICE and re-imagining our approach to immigration altogether. Agencies like ICE and the Department of Homeland Security were designed to be machines used against our own communities, now they have become much worse.
There is no middle ground left. It has been consumed by gunfire and chaos, by authoritarian tactics and systemic abuse. The choice before us continues to be crystal clear: stand with humanity, or stand aside as our social fabric unravels.
At the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, we will not stand aside.
