(The Center Square) – Fred Rogers, one of Pittsburgh’s most celebrated natives, once said “look for the helpers.”
And on Saturday, unionized health care workers said that Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot and killed by ICE in Minnesota, was one of them.
Gathered around Rogers’ memorial statue off North Shore Drive, members of SEIU Healthcare PA held a candlelight vigil for the slain man, where they described him as compassionate and “imperfect.”
“I kept saying to myself, he did nothing wrong,” said Jess Platt, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital. “The reality is heartbreaking in its simplicity: he stepped in when another person was being carelessly thrown around, and he chose compassion.”
“Alex did what any nurse would have done and what any human being should do and for that he was killed,” she added.
Pretti died Jan. 24 while clashing with ICE in south Minneapolis. Video footage shows him scuffling with agents on the ground before he is shot in the back several times. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said law enforcement acted in self-defense after finding Pretti armed.
Platt argued that it was murder.
“And I use that work murder intentionally, because when someone is killed for doing their job, for helping another human being, that is not an accident,” she said. “That is violence.”
Pretti’s death was the third shooting in Minneapolis by federal officials since the Jan. 7 killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. ICE said Good hit an agent with her car while trying to pull away and was killed in self-defense.
Both victims have faced scrutiny for interfering with immigration enforcement operations in the weeks leading up to their deaths. Recent video footage, taken 11 days before Pretti was killed, showed him aggressively antagonizing agents.
Jess Lott, a nurse at West Penn Medical Center, defended the behavior as “messy, imperfect and human.”
“I think it speaks to his conviction and the anger we all have right now toward the injustice,” she said. “If we remember him as infallible, it undercuts the message I think he’d want us to take away: if we only honor people when they are flawless, we overlook the very people who are doing the hard and imperfect work of justice and care.”
The vigil comes after the Pittsburgh City Council unanimously voted on Tuesday to ask U.S. Sens. Dave McCormick, a Republican, and John Fetterman, a Democrat, to reconsider support for a $10 billion federal appropriation in support of ICE, accusing the agency of “lawless, cruel and unconstitutional” behavior.
Later the same day, state Sen. Jay Costa, the chamber’s minority leader who represents a district in Pittsburgh, said he’d soon sponsor a resolution alongside 23 other Democrats that condemns ICE’s use of violent force and reaffirms constitutional protections for “everyone in the United States.”
SEIU members, too, want Fetterman to vote against funding for the agency, though he’s dismissed all calls to do so.
“I want a conversation on the DHS appropriations bill and support stripping it from the minibus,” he said earlier this week. “It is unlikely that will happen and our country will suffer another shutdown.”
