January 26, 2026 | Monday
Tags: max-blumenthal, glenn-greenwald, jd-vance
A Minneapolis confrontation between federal agents and activists resulted in the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old man amid contested video and calls for release of body camera footage. The incident has reignited debates over an alleged “Israelization” of U.S. policing and the political and logistical limits on large-scale deportations.
A 37‑year‑old U.S. citizen, identified in the reporting as Alex Pretti, was fatally shot by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis after a street confrontation with activists and federal officers. Video circulated online shows agents wrestling a man to the pavement, extracting what the Department of Homeland Security later described as a nine millimeter semi‑automatic handgun, and then firing multiple rounds; local reporting and the New York Times both reported that Pretti was struck roughly ten times. DHS and Border Patrol officials stated that an individual “approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a nine millimeter semi‑automatic handgun, and they tried to disarm him,” and federal sources indicate body‑worn camera footage exists that may clarify the sequence. Independent accounts in real time, including encrypted organizer logs assembled by activist groups and reviewed by Fox News Digital, document that rapid‑response networks had been tracking and mobilizing around ICE and Border Patrol vehicles in the minutes before the shooting took place.
Visual evidence is contested and incomplete. The available mobile videos are grainy and partial; a clip circulated widely appears to show a scuffle, officers pulling a firearm from the subject, and a subsequent volley of shots while the man was pinned and surrounded. Reporters and analysts have asked whether the gun discharged accidentally, whether agents perceived an imminent threat, or whether a misidentification of an object such as a phone precipitated panic. Federal officials have said agents were overwhelmed and that agents “yelled that he had a gun” before the shooting. Prosecutors and DHS have affirmed the agents’ right to self‑defense pending fuller review, and local elected officials and community groups have called for immediate release of all body‑worn camera footage and for independent investigation.
Assessing the operational dynamics requires three concrete facts: extensive federal deployments, encrypted activist coordination, and a contested visual record. Federal personnel were operating in Minneapolis as part of an investigative sweep tied to allegations of large‑scale welfare fraud in the Somali community; reporting cites DOJ estimates of between one and eight billion dollars implicated in related schemes and quotes Attorney General Merrick Garland calling the case among the largest pandemic relief fraud probes. Activist groups had catalogued ICE vehicle license plates and were mobilizing “rapid responders” to confront agents; encrypted Signal threads and a database called “Minnesota ICE Plates” show real‑time attempts to intercept enforcement operations. In that environment, agents encountered a high‑intensity, mobile crowd whose tactics included physically blocking arrests, vocal disruptions, and public identification of enforcement vehicles. Under those operational conditions, an officer confronted with a man running into the middle of an arrest while armed will make a split‑second deadly decision. The available public record does not categorically resolve the disputed film frames; it does explain why federal authorities characterize the incident as a defensive action and why many supporters of strict enforcement label the shooting as legally justifiable.
A cluster of commentators and progressive activists immediately framed the Minneapolis incident and other enforcement actions as part of an “Israelization” of American policing and immigration enforcement, drawing parallels to occupation tactics and military training linkages. Prominent left‑wing voices cited in public threads included Ryan Grimm, Hassan Piker, Glenn Greenwald, and Max Blumenthal, each advancing a narrative that equated ICE and Border Patrol tactics with Israeli security doctrine or financial links to pro‑Israel donors. Those commentators argued abolitionist or defunding responses and urged criminal and civil accountability for federal agents. The argument surfaced in tweets that juxtaposed the Minneapolis operation with military occupation analogies and in op‑eds asserting that harsh domestic enforcement is a borrowed playbook.
The analytical claim behind those threads rests on two assertions: first, that visible, militarized enforcement produces occupation‑like effects in minority neighborhoods; second, that pro‑Israel financial and training networks influence U.S. enforcement culture. The public record contains a mix of verifiable touchpoints and contested inferences. It is true that international training and interagency cooperation exist between U.S. enforcement entities and foreign partners on tactics and procedures. It is also true that public debate over U.S. immigration policy frequently overlaps with criticism of foreign policy and with advocacy from a range of ethnic and civic organizations. The narratives that move quickly from tactical cooperation to a single conspiratorial cause, however, do so by collapsing multiple institutional phenomena into a single causal claim.
A more robust analytical frame refuses the binary that this is simply an “Israel” story or simply a “domestic enforcement” story and instead locates political utility in the linkage. Casting ICE as an extension of a foreign security model serves three distinct rhetorical functions: it amplifies moral outrage by invoking occupation imagery; it recruits normative anti‑occupation audiences to domestic causes; and it reframes what would be an unpopular open‑borders policy argument as an anti‑imperial stance. Strategic messaging that links unrelated grievances can shift public sympathy and change the calculus around enforcement. That strategic bundling, rather than a unitary foreign directive, explains why discussions of training or donor relationships appear in the same threads as calls to abolish ICE and to halt all national‑level removals. Evaluating those claims requires separating documented institutional interactions and donations from the interpretive leap that attributes primary agency to a single foreign actor.
The Minneapolis incident accelerated a broader political dynamic that has constrained large‑scale removal operations. Enforcement leaders and conservative strategists had long proposed an ambitious throughput to remove millions of unauthorized residents; public statements in recent cycles estimated targets on the order of thousands per day. In practice the federal government’s reported removals peaked in the low hundreds of thousands over years. The transcript referenced an upper‑end figure of roughly 300,000 removals as an aggregate tally, and argued that high‑visibility enforcement actions were strategically counterproductive because they galvanized local resistance, produced relentless media coverage of individual tragedies, and prompted political pullback from both executive and congressional allies. That sequence — visible raids, viral video, public sympathy, and administrative retreat — is now a recognized pattern in contemporary enforcement politics.
Operationally, sustained mass removals would require four interlocking capabilities that currently are limited: unambiguous intergovernmental cooperation with local law enforcement, logistics for daily removals on the order of thousands per day, a robust legal framework and personnel for adjudications and transport, and a durable political mandate that withstands adverse press cycles. The Minneapolis case illustrates how a failure on any one of these points can produce cascading resistance. Local government sanctuary postures and organized activist rapid‑response systems degrade first‑responder situational control; litigated claims and public outrage create political costs; and inadequate coordination between federal, state, and municipal authorities leaves operatives exposed during arrests. Absent systemic reforms to those capabilities, operations framed as surgical and public will continue to produce political blowback that makes mass deportation programs unsustainable.
The practical consequence is that proponents of strict immigration enforcement face a binary choice grounded in politics, logistics, and law. One path is incremental, quietly building capacity: expanding removals through targeted criminal‑alien enforcement, employer‑verification enforcement, and enhanced interagency coordination with legal safeguards to limit civilian exposure. The other path is public, large‑scale operations that deliberately spotlight removals; those operations may achieve shorter‑term headline outcomes but will predictably produce mobilized opposition, legal challenges, and political retrenchment. The prevailing environment favors the incremental approach because of the demonstrated ability of rapid‑response networks and sympathetic media to turn tactical incidents into political liabilities. Any future strategy that seeks to materially increase removals must therefore set specific operational thresholds, fund sustained detention and transport capacity, and secure clear political authority to proceed in the face of localized resistance.