Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, visited the site of Alex Pretti’s killing late Tuesday morning in South Minneapolis.
“As I stand where Alex Pretti lost his life, in a real sense, I feel like I’m standing on holy ground,” he said. “And the blood spilled on this ground reminds us we’re in a moral moment in our country, and the soul of our nation is at stake here.”
Before addressing the media, Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor at the Atlanta church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, stood in silence at the edge of a memorial to Mr. Pretti. The memorial had sprouted around the place where he was shot and killed by federal agents on Saturday. While in Minneapolis, the senator planned to meet with local faith leaders who serve the people reeling from the recent killings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good, a Minneapolis woman fatally shot by an agent earlier this month.
Even before the senator’s arrival, the site had been attracting mourners. People brought bouquets to add to the dozens already placed along the sidewalk. A couple of votive candles still flickered in the bitter cold, amid others that had burned out. Mr. Pretti’s framed picture had been placed in a wreath, beneath a folded American flag and a few dozen pine cones arranged to spell his name.
Mr. Warnock said that when he returned to Washington, he would push to block funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Senate and bring federal immigration officials before Congress to answer for “the mayhem and death we’re seeing on our streets” from the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation crackdown.
“I’m going to use all the levers that I have available to me as a member of the Senate to hold these officials accountable,” Mr. Warnock said. “You’ll see me drag them in front of Congress, ask them the tough questions and hold them accountable.”
Chris Hippensteel is a reporter covering breaking news and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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