Was Pretti Targeted by ICE?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Alex Pretti shouted an obscenity at ICE agents. Alex Pretti flipped the finger at ICE agents. Alex Pretti kicked and smashed the taillight of an ICE SUV. Alex Pretti was bum rushed by ICE agents to subdue him.
This all happened eleven days before he was beaten and then gunned down by two ICE agents. ICE agents are super aggressive, super confrontational, and most horrifyingly super violent. They almost certainly didn’t forget that Pretti directly confronted them with rage and anger. They knew his face. And they almost certainly didn’t forget, let alone forgive.
He was a marked man. It was then only a short and horrid step for ICE agents when Pretti appeared again with cell camera in hand to record their abuses to launch a mini-search and destroy pay back against him. His possession of a gun though legally registered, holstered, and posing no threat to use it, may also have factored in the revenge and rage that the ICE agents harbored toward him. The payback was horrifically a kill.
ICE Director Tom Homan, and various other Homeland Security and ICE officials though were super careful not to mention specifically the Pretti slaying. Yet in a kind of backdoor way they confirmed that there is a shoot first mentality among some ICE agents.
They talked much about tougher management, discipline, and retraining of ICE agents. That’s a bureaucratese cover your backside way of saying that more than a few ICE agents believe they have an unfettered license to be judge, jury and in the case of Renee Good, Keith Porter Jr, and Pretti executioner. In 2025 there were more than two dozen other documented ICE gunplay acts though no fatalities.
This overuse of deadly force not coincidentally came during Trump’s first year of his second go round in the Oval Office. The Good, Porter, and Pretti slayings are hideous proof that without a massive course correction in the way ICE does business there may be no letup in the overuse of deadly force.
ICE agents did not make a private compact or plot to kill Pretti. However, there is little doubt he was known, and on their mind and not in a forgiving way. So, when Pretti confronted them again there was opportunity. The result: He’s dead.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book The ICE Shooting Scorecard (Amazon ebook and Middle Passage Press)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GH9RN5ZS
He hosts the weekly news and issues commentary radio show The Hutchinson Report Wednesdays 6 PM PST 9 PM EST at ktymgospel.net.