PRESIDENT Trump’s administration is fighting a campaign of “reckless brutality” against the people of Minnesota, the diocesan Bishop, the Rt Revd Craig Loya, has said, after a second US citizen was shot dead at an immigration protest.
Alex Pretti, aged 37, an intensive care nurse, was fatally wounded by Border Patrol officers while on the ground, video evidence suggests.
He and others were protesting against immigration raids across the state carried out on the orders of President Trump by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mr Pretti’s death comes just three weeks after the shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, also at an immigration protest. She was shot by an ICE agent as she turned her car around (News, 16 January).
As with the death of Ms Good, eyewitness accounts and the accounts of the shooting put forward by the Trump administration differ. The Department for Homeland Security claims that Mr Pretti approached officers “brandishing” a gun, but eyewitnesses and local officials say that he had a phone in his hand, and had been videoing agents’ treatment of protesters.
Mr Pretti did have a gun on his person, local officials said, which he was legally registered to carry, but it was removed by officers before he was shot.
His family issued a statement saying: “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.”
The former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle called the killing a tragedy, and urged Americans to support the wave of peaceful protests across the US, saying that the core values of the US were under attack.
Bishop Loya said that the “cartoonish lies” put forward by federal agencies “echo the most cynical propaganda machines in human history”.
He called for help from across the Church to put pressure on the US Senate not to give ICE further funds, and for ICE agents to leave Minnesota, where they have been operating for more than six weeks.
The crisis, which he described as an occupation, had nevertheless given birth to a “revolutionary love” as people came together to resist, he said.
“Vast networks of care, compassion, and solidarity [are being] organised by churches to deliver food and supplies to those who cannot leave their homes. People are documenting the violence being used against us in a way that puts their own lives at risk.
“People are standing guard outside schools and day-cares and at bus stops to protect our children from real risks of harm. Others are taking turns watching each others’ kids stuck in online learning because some schools aren’t safe. Health-care workers are bravely caring for people in hospitals that also are no longer safe, and risking being targets of arrest and detention for protecting the patients.
“A rich web of underground care and hidden love is taking deep root, and it’s amazing to think what fruit that might bear when this occupation ends.”
He urged people not to give in to despair or anger following the deaths. “The only way hatred can be effectively resisted is doubling down on love,” he said.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Revd Sean Rowe, warned on Sunday that practising the Christian faith was now at risk in the US. “In the United States, we no longer live in a time when we can expect to practise our faith without risk, and we are confronting what vulnerable communities of faith have experienced for generations,” he said.
“Our right to worship freely as one Church, committed to the dignity of every human being, has been curtailed by the fear that too many immigrant Christians face when they leave their homes. Peaceful protests, a right long enshrined in the Constitution, are now made deadly. Carrying out the simple commands of Jesus — feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, making peace — now involves risks for the Church and grave danger for those we serve.”
He expected the Church to “be tested in every conceivable way . . . as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God”.
The day before Mr Pretti’s shooting, Episcopal leaders from across the US, including the Bishop of Washington, the Rt Revd Mariann Edgar Budde, travelled to Minneapolis for a day of public witness calling for an end to the immigration raids.
Clergy were among hundreds joining a peaceful march in sub-zero temperatures. “To harm and even kill those who bear witness to what is happening — this is a bright-line moment for our country and our values,” Bishop Budde said. “In our varied and united faith traditions, love of neighbour is not optional.”
There has also been outrage over the seizing of infants and young children by ICE agents as part of the immigration crackdown.
Five-year-old Liam Ramos was taken on the driveway of his home, with his father. A photo shows a young child wearing a bunny hat, with an ICE agent holding on to him. Other cases have since emerged of young children being taken into detention by ICE agents.
The World Council of Churches has issued a statement saying that it has been deeply alarmed by escalating violence in the US.