MINNEAPOLIS — Rioters violently attacked a Minneapolis hotel where they believed federal immigration agents were staying Sunday night.
A crowd of protesters swarmed the hotel around 11 p.m. local time, smashed windows and destroyed parts of the lobby as rage over the killing of Alex Pretti and the presence of immigration enforcement boiled over. The aftermath of the attack was captured by Jorge Ventura, reporting for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Where is the local PD?” said a federal agent who was bleeding from the face and hands as he stood guarding an entrance to the Home2 Suites in downtown Minneapolis following the mayhem. It’s unclear how the agent, wearing a Bureau of Prisons uniform, was injured in the attack.
It’s unclear whether any Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers were staying at the hotel.
Rioters apparently smashed windows and vandalized the lobby of the hotel in the attack, painted “ICE OUT,” “ICE KILLS,” and “KYS [kill yourself] ICE” on the building. Demonstrators also appeared to set up makeshift barricades, banged on trash cans and blew whistles while shouting at federal agents during the demonstration.
At least one Minneapolis police officer was seen guarding the entrance of the hotel. Minneapolis Department of Public Safety said Minnesota state troopers and other state officers had been deployed to the scene, but were later withdrawn.
“While they collaboratively worked to encircle the group for arrests because the demonstration was not peaceful, federal agents arrived without communication and deployed chemical irritants, clearing the group. The State Patrol and DNR are no longer on scene,” the department said in a post to X.
The violent attack on the hotel follows a pattern of escalating chaos after border patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, 37, Saturday. Video of the incident shows agents tackling him to the ground before shooting him. Department of Homeland Security officials said he had a gun. Pretti’s family said he was licensed to carry a gun.
Protests erupted on the streets of Minneapolis in the hours following the shooting, Ventura reported on the ground for the DCNF. Pretti’s death came 17 days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, whom the DHS claimed “weaponized her vehicle” in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
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