Alex Pretti’s Killer May Be Part of His Union

This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and Jewish Currents.

On January 24th, Border Patrol agents shot and killed Veterans Affairs ICU nurse and ICE observer Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—firing at least 10 shots within five seconds while Pretti was pinned to the ground. About six hours later, Pretti’s labor union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), released a statement about his murder. “We have received confirmation that a member of AFGE Local 3669, Alex J. Pretti, was the man killed during the incident,” it read. But while referring to Pretti’s killing as a “tragedy,” the statement fell short of condemning the federal immigration agents behind the shooting. “Until we have verified facts,” the union wrote, “it is important that we refrain from speculation or drawing conclusions.” A separate statement by AFGE President Everett Kelley blamed the Trump administration for Pretti’s killing, but also made no mention of Border Patrol or ICE as the parties responsible. (In contrast, many unions have released statements clearly denouncing the perpetrators, with the National Nurses United writing on January 24th that “nurses demand the immediate abolition of ICE.”)

This hesitation to denounce Border Patrol came from a union that represents not just government employees like Environmental Protection Agency workers, park rangers, and VA nurses, but also federal law enforcement officers—including approximately 18,000 Border Patrol personnel unionized under the AFGE-affiliated National Border Patrol Council. The identity of the Border Patrol agent who shot and killed Pretti has not been confirmed, but it is possible that he, too, belongs to this union. The AFGE acknowledged this in its statement, writing: “We just recently discovered that the officer involved was a Border Patrol officer and we are still not certain if he is a member of AFGE.” “These officers shouldn’t be killing anybody,” Lisa Dadabo, an AFGE member and VA social worker from Chicago told me. “But for a union member to kill another is a fundamental betrayal of what a union is supposed to be.”

Border Patrol’s killing of Pretti came as part of a weekslong federal occupation of Minnesota. Since December 2025, thousands of federal immigration agents have carried out unprecedented violence on Minnesota, conducting home raids without signed judicial warrants, detaining a preschooler, tear gassing high school students, and killing 37-year-old mother and poet Renee Good. Many union members have been targeted by this onslaught. Approximately 16 members of UNITE HERE Local 17, a union of hospitality workers, have been abducted from the Twin Cities metro area since late December 2025. SEIU Local 26, which presents janitors, building maintenance, and other low-wage workers, has had at least 20 members abducted.

Unions have subsequently become a core part of the resistance in Minnesota. On January 23rd, a day before Pretti’s killing, unions joined faith groups and community organizations in leading a mass mobilization calling for an immediate end to ICE and Border Patrol presence in the state. An estimated 50,000 (possibly as high as 100,000) people marched through Minneapolis in subzero temperatures that day, risking frostbite; workers and community leaders picketed and staged acts of civil disobedience. Hundreds of businesses closed in protest, and many workers stayed home or called in sick, part of an economic shutdown that underscored the urgency of getting federal immigration agents to leave.

Workers say it’s a fundamental contradiction to be in a union with the very federal agents their movement is opposing. “We can’t have it both ways,” says Aimee Potter, a Chicago-based VA social worker who works in addiction treatment and is an AFGE steward in her shop. “We can’t advocate for our communities and for ‘ICE Out’ and at the same time be connected to an organization that is terrorizing our members and our communities.” Dadabo agreed, noting that this discrepancy was clearer than ever after Border Patrol’s killing of Pretti. “When I found out [the person they killed] was a VA nurse who had been trying to help people, I can’t even really describe it. It was just seething rage,” she says. “[Pretti’s killing] is just a real breaking point . . . the last straw.” (Potter and Dadabo are not sharing the names of their hospitals for fear of retaliation, and they asked me to make it clear they are not speaking on behalf of their unions or the federal government.)

Potter and Dadabo have now become part of an emerging rank-and-file effort to remove the Border Patrol union from AFGE. Potter says she is in a Signal chat with “dozens” of VA workers from across the country who do not want to be in the same union as Border Patrol agents. On Monday morning, these workers released a public letter demanding that the leadership of AFGE and the AFL-CIO (the largest labor federation of the country) “immediately condemn [Pretti’s] killing, move to stop representing Customs and Border Patrol, and support a Department of Justice investigation of the officers involved.” “We ask you to show some courage,” the letter read. “We ask you to uphold the most fundamental principle of unionism—that an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Asked to comment on these demands, the AFL-CIO directed me to a January 24th statement made by its president Liz Shuler that calls for ICE to leave Minnesota but does not address the demand to remove Border Patrol from AFGE and the AFL-CIO. AFGE did not immediately respond to my requests for comment. The Border Patrol union, for its part, wrote in a January 24th statement that “the fake and dishonest media and the shameless politicians should be held accountable for willfully misleading the public and enticing these protesters and agitators. We have full confidence that when more facts are revealed, our agents and officers will be shown to have utilized justifiable force in eliminating the threat.”

In the summer of 2022, the ICE officers’ union—thus far a part of the AFGE and the AFL-CIO—began a formal split from these bodies. “They only care about their far-left agendas and politics,” the leader of the ICE officers’ union said of AFGE and AFL-CIO at the time. In addition to “holding [Border Patrol] accountable” for what Dadabo called “a human rights crisis,” AFGE organizers like Potter and Dadabo would now like to see a separation from the Border Patrol union. “I don’t want to sink AFGE,” said Dadabo, who has remained an active union member and steward even after her union’s collective bargaining agreements were dissolved by the Trump administration. “This is not about that. The purpose of a federal union is to protect the public good. If we’re not doing that, then we’re failing.”

Update: About three hours after this article was published, AFGE released a statement calling for the “resignation or termination of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for smearing slain AFGE member Alex Pretti as ‘domestic terrorist.'” In the statement, AFGE demanded “a full and transparent investigation into Alex’s killing led by an independent third party,” as well as “bipartisan congressional oversight to uncover the truth, ensure accountability, and begin repairing the damage to public trust.” The statement does not mention Border Patrol, or include a response to members’ demand to remove the Border Patrol union from AFGE.

Sarah is the Editor for Workday Magazine.