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Organized Labor Escalates Against ICE Summary Executions by Whitney Curry Wimbish
Unions in Minnesota and across the country are gearing up for new mass actions after the public execution of one of their own, ICU nurse and American Federation of Government Employees Local 3669 member Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Federal immigration agents shot Pretti in the back ten times in five seconds on Saturday as he attempted to help a woman they had thrown to the ground. His last words were to her: “Are you OK?”
Organized labor responded immediately to Pretti’s execution with rage and anguish, including the National Nurses United (NNU), which said Monday afternoon that it is holding a national week of action, including vigils every night this week.
“ICE messed with the wrong profession,” NNU President Mary Turner said in a statement. Like Pretti, she’s a Twin Cities intensive care unit registered nurse. “Never get between nurses and our patients. We nurses are forever patient advocates, and that means we will fight to protect you at the bedside and we will fight to protect you in the streets—just as Alex was doing when he was executed in cold blood by border patrol. This stops now. Nurses want ICE abolished. Not one more penny for their crimes.”
Coming just one day after 100,000 workers successfully shut down the Twin Cities for a one-day general strike to demand immigration thugs leave town, nurses and other union members described their heartbreak and spoke movingly of the inhumanity of Trump’s terror campaign. One was registered nurse and SEIU National Nurses Alliance chair Martha Baker, who said in a statement, “When a nurse is killed for trying to help others, none of us are safe.”
Organized labor responded immediately to Pretti’s execution with rage and anguish, including the National Nurses United (NNU), which said Monday afternoon that it is holding a national week of action, including vigils every night this week.
“ICE messed with the wrong profession,” NNU President Mary Turner said in a statement. Like Pretti, she’s a Twin Cities intensive care unit registered nurse. “Never get between nurses and our patients. We nurses are forever patient advocates, and that means we will fight to protect you at the bedside and we will fight to protect you in the streets—just as Alex was doing when he was executed in cold blood by border patrol. This stops now. Nurses want ICE abolished. Not one more penny for their crimes.”
Coming just one day after 100,000 workers successfully shut down the Twin Cities for a one-day general strike to demand immigration thugs leave town, nurses and other union members described their heartbreak and spoke movingly of the inhumanity of Trump’s terror campaign. One was registered nurse and SEIU National Nurses Alliance chair Martha Baker, who said in a statement, “When a nurse is killed for trying to help others, none of us are safe.”
https://prospect.org/2026/01/27/ice-trump-minneapolis-organized-labor-escalate-general-strike/]
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