The 37-year-old killed in the street by ICE agents Jan. 24 in Minneapolis–a registered nurse, outdoorsman, and competitive bicyclist–is remembered by those who knew him as a “wonderful person” and “truly one of the best of us.”
He was, by all other accounts, the opposite of the “domestic terrorist” label that the Trump administration tries (and fails) to make stick.
A Minneopolis resident named Mac Randolph, who lost his father in December of 2024, shared a video from that time with local CBS affiliate WCCO. In it, his father’s ICU nurse —Alex Jeffery Pretti–provides a final salute to honor Air Force Sgt. Terrance Lee Randolph before wheeling his body out of the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.
As Pretti reads aloud the words of tribute for the veteran in this recording, he recites some of the values of the environment of his work:
“Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”
While Pretti’s vocation was apart from Sgt. Randolph’s military service, he himself would later lose his life for the love of his country. He was killed–not brandishing his pistol, but holding his phone–in the work of bearing witness to the abuses of a rogue state, which he fought to change.
His act of showing up to record, and that of the many witnesses of his murder, are a bare necessity to recover the ideals of the USA and its rule of law.
The above summarizes AP News’ Jan. 25, 2026 article, “Minneapolis mourns ICU nurse killed by a Border Patrol agent as a warmhearted neighbor and caregiver” by Michael Biesecker, Jim Mustian, and Sarah Raza.
Photo Credits: Memorial by Darth Stabro, CC0, Link; and VA portrait by United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Public Domain, Link.
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