Minnesota Voters Lay 'I Voted' Stickers at Memorials for Two Killed in ICE Crackdown

Minnesota voters turned Election Day into a memorial. After casting ballots in Tuesday's midterms, some walked to the memorial sites for Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good and left their "I Voted" stickers behind — a quiet nod to the two US citizens killed by federal immigration officials in the Minneapolis region in January.

Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Minneapolis. Good was a writer and mother of three. Both were killed during the Trump administration's large-scale immigration enforcement operation, "Operation Metro Surge," which brought Department of Homeland Security officials into Minnesota from December into January and ended with their deaths and mass protests nationwide.

"I knew Alex Pretti," said Arne, a retired physician who worked alongside him and asked to use only his first name. "I just knew that he was a competent nurse – a really, really liked guy. And he was assassinated." Arne choked up as he spoke about his vote and about Pretti. Another voter, Mike F, who withheld his last name for privacy, left his sticker at Good's memorial: "I felt like my vote felt a little bit more in touch with some of the things that happened earlier this year in the city," he said.

The grassroots networks that once ran rapid response against immigration arrests have pivoted to election defense. Groundwork Action, working with on-the-ground teams, trained more than 1,000 "democracy guardians" to visit polling sites and watch for disturbances or federal interference, according to its executive director, Wintana Melekin. "One thing we saw with Metro Surge is that if you had Black skin, you were a target of the federal government," Melekin said. "And so we made sure those folks had a safe and secure opportunity to cast the ballot."

The federal government loomed over the day. The Trump administration announced that justice department election monitors would be deployed around the country, alongside threats that federal immigration officials would show up at polling sites nationwide. The justice department later said neither the FBI nor ICE would serve as poll monitors — but that other federal agents would. Melekin saw it as more of the same: "After we saw the decrease of ICE officers, I knew that our elections would be the next target," she said.

The Guardian rode along with a team of "mobile de-escalators" from the Election Protection Network, part of the coalition Groundwork organized, as they patrolled the Twin Cities in pink vests. Polling sites stayed largely calm, with few calls to the network, which observers credited to a heavy early-voting push. On one rainy afternoon, the team got word that federal justice department monitors were at a site where neighbors had started yelling at them; by the time the de-escalators arrived, both sides were gone. That neighborhood had been a flashpoint during Metro Surge, including an episode where officials pepper sprayed anti-ICE protesters in a local park. "In the face of so much trauma and fear, it means a lot to me that I can be out here with others showing up for our neighbors," said Alex M, one of the de-escalators. "That's what we do in Minnesota."