The Trump White House has unleashed chaos and crime in America’s streets. Patriotic Americans reject these assaults on our bodies, rights, and human dignity. We reject the hourly assault on the truth pushed by white supremacists and Christian Nationalists running our nation’s and state’s government—funded by billionaires who buy political power. This violence and poisoned well of disinformation cannot go on.

ICE shot another person dead in Minneapolis, killing Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026. You’ve watched thousands of those community members brave much harsher cold than what we have here in Texas to show up in opposition to his horrifying death: on his knees, shot from behind by a masked federal goon, and shot nine more times.

As news has spread that the third bullet to hit Renee Good a couple of weeks ago came through her passenger window and went through her head, the wanton and callous nature of these killings demonstrate the total lack of regard these agents have for the communities they are supposedly making safer. ICE has zero regard for the safety of anybody in Minneapolis, on full display in the barrage of lies and disinformation that have littered social media and news reports—lies that are proving too much for even Republican types to buy. 

Molly Wilhelm at the Houston Chronicle says GOP Congressman Michael McCaul—likely drawing courage from the fact that he’s stepping down—took to Twitter to call for an investigation. But who will deliver justice for the violence we’ve all witnessed? Federal officials have blown any semblance of credibility in their patently absurd messaging about the Alex Pretti murder, and any investigation they might pursue would be marked by this travesty—all while they block local and state officials in Minneapolis from investigating the horrific incident.

From Minneapolis to Texas

There’s horror at home in Texas as well. Quorum Report’s Scott Braddock shared a video from immigration attorney Eric Lee that appears to show the screams of women and children from within the walls of the migrant detention facility at Dilley, just Southwest of San Antonio. The Texas Tribune says that facility has been the site of the protest of dozens of immigrant families. Lee shared with the Tribune that detainees had begun protesting the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, and the treatment of people protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the country. Lee also shared “when I was in the waiting room, I heard guards come out and say, ‘everybody out right now’...They looked white faced. They were very concerned, obviously, by whatever was happening.” 

Clearly an uprising of some degree inside this facility, the conditions of which Neha Desai, Managing Director at the National Center for Youth Law, has said are “fundamentally unsafe for anyone, let alone young children…since the re-opening of family detention, hundreds of families – including babies and toddlers – have been subjected to substandard medical care, degrading and harsh treatment and extremely prolonged times in custody.”

Kidnapping children and cold-blooded executions are supposed to be the work of cartels, not an American law enforcement agency funded by our tax dollars. Criminal ICE agents should be unmasked, prosecuted, and the agency returned to immigration and CUSTOMS enforcement.

Meanwhile, South Texas Democratic Congress Members Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez Jr, voted in favor of providing extra funding for the Department of Homeland Security, including 10 billion dollars in funding for ICE. ICE is now the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, with the fewest checks on its power—but we must remember that change is possible. ICE was only founded in 2003, and reform is more than possible for a relatively new, albeit massive government entity. 

Power in numbers can help that mission along as well. YouGov released new polling, completed after the Alex Pretti killing, which shows that public support for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reached an all-time high, with more Americans now favoring the elimination of ICE than opposing it, with 46% in support versus 41% in opposition. The Alex Pretti killing itself is seen as unjustified by 48% of respondents—a figure that climbs to 63% among those who have viewed video evidence of the incident. 58% of the public now views ICE and border patrol tactics as too forceful. Overall, the data suggests that direct exposure to agency tactics through video is a primary driver in the growing national movement to protest or dismantle federal immigration enforcement. 

Stop a second, and imagine what the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti might have gotten away with, had there not been several people shooting video at those key moments, both of which developed in mere seconds. It turns out that the camera in your pocket is your most valuable weapon at this point. As rumors of a coming ICE escalation in Austin build, as they continue to terrorize neighborhoods in Dallas and Fort Worth and Houston and San Antonio and elsewhere, be the eyes and ears of a frightened nation. At Progress Texas, we encourage vigilance and action, work those cameras people: democracy dies in darkness. 

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