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ORGANIZED LABOR ESCALATES AGAINST ICE SUMMARY EXECUTIONS  
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Whitney Curry Wimbish
January 27, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ Unions in Minnesota and across the country have spent the days
after an immigration officer murdered Alex Pretti discussing how to
escalate, including toward a national general strike _

Activists carry signs during a protest on January 26, 2026, in
Washington, D.C. , Probal Rashid/Sipa via AP Image

 

Unions in Minnesota and across the country are gearing up for new mass
actions after the public execution of one of their own, ICU nurse and
American Federation of Government Employees Local 3669 member Alex
Jeffrey Pretti. Federal immigration agents shot Pretti in the back ten
times in five seconds
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on Saturday as he attempted to help a woman they had thrown to the
ground. His last words were to her: “Are you OK?” 

Organized labor responded immediately to Pretti’s execution with
rage and anguish, including the National Nurses United (NNU), which
said Monday afternoon that it is holding a national week of action
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including vigils every night this week. 

“ICE messed with the wrong profession,” NNU President Mary Turner
said in a statement. Like Pretti, she’s a Twin Cities intensive care
unit registered nurse. “Never get between nurses and our patients.
We nurses are forever patient advocates, and that means we will fight
to protect you at the bedside and we will fight to protect you in the
streets—just as Alex was doing when he was executed in cold blood by
border patrol. This stops now. Nurses want ICE abolished. Not one more
penny for their crimes.”

 

Coming just one day after 100,000 workers successfully shut down the
Twin Cities for a one-day general strike to demand immigration thugs
leave town, nurses and other union members described their heartbreak
and spoke movingly of the inhumanity of Trump’s terror campaign. One
was registered nurse and SEIU National Nurses Alliance chair Martha
Baker, who said in a statement, “When a nurse is killed for trying
to help others, none of us are safe.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement “must be removed from our
communities now,” wrote Baker, who is also the president of SEIU
Local 1991. “We will not stop organizing and speaking out. We must
ensure that this tragedy is a turning point, and not allow it to break
our momentum. Alex was there to help. ICE was there to hurt. We
won’t forget him.”

NOW UNION MEMBERS ARE ORGANIZING TO ESCALATE. Over the weekend,
workers across sectors met throughout the country to determine their
next steps, including striking again for a day, holding an indefinite
strike, and building toward a general strike. In 2023, United Auto
Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain called on unions everywhere to set
their contracts to end on May 1, 2028, so that workers across
industries could go on strike that day legally. Union contracts often
include a no-strike clause that forbids workers from going on strike,
forcing workers to strike only after their contract expires. (Workers
may also undertake a wildcat strike, which federal law holds is
illegal.) 

But that’s not soon enough, workers say. 

“Clearly, we cannot wait until 2028,” said Emily Woo Yamasaki, a
member of the UAW Local 2320, Legal Services Staff Association, and an
organizer with the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP), speaking on Saturday
night at an FSP forum in New York City
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“A general strike can’t be built overnight,” they said, “but
it is more urgent than ever” for organized labor to talk about
it.  

 

Dan Troccoli, labor branch co-chair of Twin Cities DSA and member
leader in the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, was another labor
leader who met to discuss escalation with a range of other union
members this weekend. The most likely next action is a one-day strike,
he said, which will help build strength and labor discipline toward
bigger actions. Troccoli knows first-hand what it takes to move people
to strike; the public middle school social studies teacher has done it
twice before and described it as “a lift.” Like Yamasaki, he noted
that it takes time. But he said union leaders everywhere should know
that people who showed up to the strike on Friday were mostly
non-union workers, and recognize that people are motivated to act
now.  

“It should give a lot of these union leaders the confidence that we
can call for this thing, and it will be responded to en masse,”
Troccoli said, adding that the demands of a national general strike
must match the enormity of the action. 

“If we’re going to do this, and we need support from the rest of
the country, then the question becomes not simply ICE Out alone, but
also Trump out of the office. We can’t simply go from city to city
to mobilize big actions. We have to oppose the entire agenda.” 

The call for a general strike should come “because the appetite for
it is extremely widespread,” Troccoli added. “Many people are
looking at what the Trump administration is doing with horror and this
is the answer.”  

Speaking at the forum in Manhattan this weekend, John Ferretti, member
of Transport Workers Union Local 100, described challenges workers
face to pulling off a nationwide strike, including the low support of
union staff and leadership, whom he said would prefer to maintain the
status quo. 

 

“There’s not going to be any easy next steps that we can plan out
in advance. I think that the key is rank-and-file involvement in
putting tremendous pressure in the labor bureaucracy to grow a fucking
spine to understand the moment we are living in,” he said. “ICE is
a haunting reminder,” he added, of pervasive union weakness and low
union density across the U.S. 

“I’m very much in favor of a line of development where workers
begin to take action,” he said, and that will require moving union
leadership. 

“I’m all for educating workers about the general strike and the
lessons of past general strikes,” Ferretti said, “but I’m not
for an unprepared general strike. I’m not for a general strike that
loses.”

When unions are silent about political issues, “they become weak,
and that weakness only encourages the sociopathic violent fantasies of
billionaires,” which mirrors exactly the violent practices of
immigration agents, he said. Workers must also contend with preparing
to defend themselves and their communities, including because Trump
has redefined domestic terrorism so that almost any kind of dissent
qualifies.

“Unfortunately, love doesn’t win the day,” he added. “It’s
about power, and they are showing us that every day.” 

PRETTI IS THE FIFTH PERSON
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IMMIGRATION AGENTS HAVE EXECUTED since September, according to
reported incidents. ICE agent Jonathan Ross executed legal observer
Renee Good with four shots to the face on January 7. Just days before
that, an off-duty ICE agent killed Keith Porter in Los Angeles
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on New Year’s Eve; the agent claimed Porter raised a weapon at him.
In December agents shot to death Isaias Sanchez Barboza in Texas. And
before that, an agent shot to death Silverio Villegas González on
September 12.

Agents have also shot and wounded eight other people since September:
Marimar Martinez in Chicago on October 4, Carlitos Ricardo Parias in
Los Angeles on October 21, Jose Garcia-Sorto in Phoenix on October 29,
Carlos Jimenez in California the next day, Tiago Alexandre
Sousa-Martins in Maryland on Christmas Eve, Luis David Nino Moncada
and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras in Oregon on January 8, and
Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis on January 14.

Agents have faced zero repercussions for the deaths and injuries.
Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and her subordinates
routinely spread lies about the people their agents have killed and
maimed, including their smear campaign against Pretti. 

“This would be a tragedy if it wasn’t a crime,” Troccoli said of
Pretti’s execution, and added that he wants to see the Democratic
party take stronger action as well as reckon with the fact that prior
to Trump, the president with the most deportations to his name was
Barack Obama, who ultimately deported 3.1 million people
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eight years in office. He also called on local leaders to undertake a
strategy of noncooperation with immigration agents rather than, as
Gov. Tim Walz did, mobilize the National Guard to defend the Whipple
Federal Building rather than defend Minnesotans. Ultimately, Trocolli
said, workers are the ones who will drive out ICE, not elected
officials.  

“We as the people can’t necessarily look to them as the center of
change,” he said. “That has to be with us. That has to be with the
mass of people.” 

The UAW did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. 

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Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She
previously worked in the Financial Times newsletters division, The
Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey. Her
work has been published in multiple outlets, including The New York
Times, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Music & Literature,
North American Review, Sentient, Semafor, and elsewhere. She is a
coauthor of The Majority Report’s daily newsletter and publishes
short fiction in a range of literary magazines.

* Alex Pretti; ICE; Unions; Strikes;
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