Executions Require Accountability, Not Staff Reshuffling

Left Unchecked, Atrocities Like the Pretti and Good Killings Will Escalate

The killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 24, is not just a tragedy, as so many commentators (and President Donald Trump) have been calling it. In my past work as a human rights investigator, I’ve seen this kind of behavior many times globally. Based on the extensive video analysis, it’s hard to describe this as anything other than an execution. The same holds for the killing of Renee Good earlier this month.

Both of these are not just crimes, but atrocities, grotesquely cruel and inhumane acts, perpetrated by federal agents and defended by officials at some of the highest levels of government.

The answer to such atrocities is not just to shuffle staff in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as the Trump administration is doing, or to push for better training.

The answer is to ensure accountability, including through full criminal investigations that encompasses the actions of senior leaders who seem to have authorized, condoned, and helped perpetrators evade justice.

That’s urgent, because Pretti’s and Good’s executions are not isolated cases.

An Emerging Pattern

Pretti’s and Good’s killings fit within a pattern of increasing brutality against both immigrants and protesters. We’ve already seen DHS agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) engage in growing numbers of serious abuses, including:

• The enforced disappearance (not mere deportation) of more than 200 men, with no due process and in defiance of a court order, to a brutal prison in El Salvador where many of them were tortured and at least some sexually assaulted.

• Holding detainees in inhumane and abusive conditions of detention. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025.

• Sidestepping constitutional protections like the requirement for a judicial warrant before going into someone’s home, which can result in arbitrary detentions.

• Increasing reports of excessive use of force, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis this month.

And all of this is happening in the context of Congress’s massive scaling up of ICE’s budget last year, making it by far the largest law enforcement agency in the country, with the fewest checks on its conduct.

Complicity and Impunity

These are not one-off incidents of poorly trained or careless agents. Instead, senior officials, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and presidential adviser Stephen Miller, have defended and applauded flagrant abuses of power.

Despite powerful evidence of illegality in the Good and Pretti killings, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has refused to investigate the Good case. It has left the Pretti case in DHS’s hands, for a mere administrative review, not criminal investigation. Federal law enforcement’s refusal to cooperate with state investigations raises further alarm.

There are words for that, too: impunity and complicity.

Allowing atrocities to go without full, independent investigation, is extremely dangerous and risks unleashing ever escalating rounds of brutality by federal agents. It’s exactly what in many other countries—from Iran to Venezuela and Egypt —has allowed similar abuses to morph into mass crimes.

Nobody should want that for the US.

The Answer: Accountability

Americans and our representatives need to move swiftly to check this abuse before our country becomes unrecognizable.

Most importantly, officials at every level need to get the message that they will be held accountable—even if not today, one day. This has been made hard by President Trump’s slew of pardons, including for the most violent offenders from January 6.

But there are clear actions we can demand and take:

First, Congress has tremendous power here and should not settle for symbolic actions by the executive. It needs to:

• Directly and thoroughly investigate both the abuses (including instructions and guidance up the chain of command) and any efforts to prevent or block accountability within DHS, DOJ, or the White House;

• Push for independent, full criminal investigations of alleged abuses involving federal immigration authorities; and

• Cut off funding for ICE as long as the abuse and impunity continue.

Second, state law enforcement needs to fully deploy all tools at its disposal to both preserve evidence and investigate and prosecute abuse by federal officers.

And finally, all Americans, whatever their ideological viewpoint, need to speak up about these atrocities, putting pressure on their representatives, and demanding accountability.

The good news is that we’re already seeing a massive public outcry, with growing numbers of people across party lines expressing alarm about ICE’s conduct--whatever their views on enforcement of immigration law.

Not only that, but we’re seeing signs of the Republican majority in Congress, which has operated mostly in lockstep with the administration, splintering on this issue. To his credit, Senator Bill Cassidy called for a full joint federal and state investigation and he’s being joined by a growing number of his colleagues in the House and Senate expressing concern. Senator Rand Paul has summoned immigration officials for oversight hearings.

But these members of Congress are going to come under pressure from the administration to settle for symbolic actions like moving Greg Bovino out of Minneapolis.

If we want to stem the growing tide of brutality and lawlessness, we all need to keep up the people pressure now for real accountability, not just more performance.

At RepresentUs, we’re making it easy for you to demand accountability from your representative. Let’s all do so now!