Bill Clinton has today condemned the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents as “unacceptable” and warns the Trump administration’s dishonesty about the “horrible scenes” coming out of Minneapolis is a direct and possibly fatal threat to American democracy. At almost the same time, the current president Sunday wasted no time once again trying to put all the blame for the fatal ICE shootings of Pretti and Renee Good on “Democrat run Sanctuary Cities and States.”
As the nation and the world reel from a chaotic immigration enforcement and abduction situation across America that seems to be going from bad to worse rapidly, the reaction to Pretti’s much filmed and documented January 24 death in the Minnesota city by masked ICE officers has proven a political, constitutional and moral flashpoint.
Decrying a bloody and violent landscape “that I never thought would take place in America,” the online posting from Clinton today offered the sharpest rebuke of Trump and his MAGA gang that the former president has ever made publicly.
“To make matters even worse, at every turn, the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we’ve seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics, including impeding investigations by local authorities,” the 79-year-old Clinton wrote Sunday.
Previously falsely attacking Good for being the antagonist in the January 7 incident with ICE that resulted in the legal observer being shot in the face, Trump and top members of his administration have spent most of the last 24 hours trying to taint Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” who was aiming to “massacre law enforcement.” Earning backlash from even the NRA, part of that narrative is contradicted by footage that shows Pretti, who is a registered gun owner and had a firearm on him on Saturday, holding a cell phone not a gun as he was pepper sprayed, struck and then shot repeatedly.
Flying the flag of “We the People,” Clinton bluntly concluded his posting: “Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them. If we give our freedoms away after 250 years, we might never get them back.”
The remarks Sunday by the 42nd POTUS and two-term Democrat followed comments earlier in the day by Barack Obama on the death of the 37-year-old ICU Nurse.
As video from several perspectives shows, Pretti was attempting to stop ICE from assaulting a woman they had just shoved to the ground at the Minneapolis intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue after agents were refused entry to a nearby restaurant. In rare strident terms earlier Sunday, the 44th POTUS and two-term Democrat declared Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” Having stayed fairly quiet publicly through many of Trump’s authoritarian actions over the years, Obama called Pretti’s killing a “wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
(l-R) Barack Obama & Donald Trump at the funeral of Jimmy Carter, Jan. 9, 2025 (Photo: Getty)
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The somewhat delayed responses from the two former Commander-in-chiefs also comes as a call for Clinton and Obama, as well as Joe Biden and George W. Bush, to go to Minneapolis and stand directly with anti-ICE demonstrators and immigration enforcement observers is catching on online.
As Clinton has been entangled with the GOP controlled Congress the past month in the ongoing and still only partial revealed Jeffrey Epstein scandal, Obama remains likely the only public figure the 79-year-old Trump truly fears. Correspondingly, neither Biden, who Trump hates, nor Bush, who the ex-Apprentice host has expressed frequent contempt for, have spoken out about Pretti’s death yet. Responding before many of her peers, former Vice President and Trump’s 2024 rival Kamala Harris said Saturday she was “enraged and heartbroken for Alex, his family, Minneapolis, and America” over Pretti’s killing.
Late Sunday, after hosting a screening of the Brett Ratner directed Melania documentary at the White House on Saturday night, Trump tried to take back control. He took to social media in one of many posts today to once again call “on the United States Congress to immediately pass Legislation to END Sanctuary Cities, which is the root cause of all of these problems.”
Not mentioning Obama or Clinton, but naming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey directly, and implying California’s Gavin Newsom, New York’s Kathy Hochul, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, among others, Trump sought to put Blue States on the back foot again.
“Democrat run Sanctuary Cities and States are REFUSING to cooperate with ICE, and they are actually encouraging Leftwing Agitators to unlawfully obstruct their operations to arrest the Worst of the Worst People!” he wrote Sunday afternoon. “By doing this, Democrats are putting Illegal Alien Criminals over Taxpaying, Law-Abiding Citizens, and they have created dangerous circumstances for EVERYONE involved. Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”
On cue, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) posted that he would this week “champion a legislative effort to end sanctuary city policies forever, which could lead to rational immigration reform.” That effort by the Trump golf buddy will apparently run parallel with promises from almost all Senate Democrats to kill any ICE funding this week unless there are some big changes at the agency. Such a scorching by the minority party runs the risk of jettisoning efforts to avoid a January 30 government shutdown that looked avoidable until Saturday’s shooting.
While both Good and Pretti have been killed by ICE in the past few weeks, at least half a dozen other people have been shot to death by federal immigration agents over the past year as the Trump administration has ramped up abductions, detentions and deportations. Around 32 individuals died in ICE custody in 2025. As well, there has been gunfire in Minneapolis that didn’t result in death, luckily, On January 14, Julio Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg in a home in the north part of the city by ICE as agents were raiding the premises.
As they have in almost every incident, Homeland Security portrayed the matter as a defensive move. “Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” DHS said in a long and convoluted January 14 post. The Kristi Noem-led DHS did note truthfully: “The initial subject was hit in the leg.”
