Editorial | An ICE pause is the only path to peace

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Minnesota is standing at a dangerous edge. After a third shooting involving federal immigration agents in less than three weeks, both the state and its largest city are trapped in a familiar and deeply corrosive moment. As of Saturday afternoon, key facts remain unsettled. That uncertainty is not incidental. It is destabilizing.

First, the obvious must be said. Residents and others who are staging protest in Minneapolis cannot allow anger, however justified, to tip into destruction. In the face of an ongoing federal presence widely experienced by residents as threatening and destabilizing, we all must respond with restraint and discipline. This city cannot afford to fracture. We have lived through what happens when fear outruns facts. We must not fall into that trap again.

But our continued restraint will demand clarity. And clarity begins with facts — all of them — gathered openly, tested independently and shared fully with the public.

That means the shooting death of 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti on Saturday morning cannot be reviewed behind federal walls alone. A joint investigation must be established immediately, with federal, state and local authorities granted equal access to evidence, witnesses, body camera footage and timelines. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and local law enforcement must be invited into a transparent partnership with federal investigators. Anything less will be read, fairly or not, as concealment.

Federal officials have argued after previous ICE-related shootings that internal review was sufficient. In a city still marked by unresolved trauma around police violence, that answer no longer holds. Transparency cannot be performative. It must be structural.

What is not open to debate is this: The current ICE surge in Minnesota must be paused.

The stated mission of targeting the “worst of the worst” has collided with on-the-ground reality: fear rippling through neighborhoods, essential workers staying home, businesses disrupted and a city that increasingly feels under siege. Whatever limited enforcement gains may be occurring are being overwhelmed by the broader damage inflicted on civic life, public safety and trust in government.

An ICE pause would not represent abolition. It is governance. It is an acknowledgment that tactics producing sweeping disruption, mounting injury and now multiple civilian deaths are failing their own stated aims.

Get the facts out. All of them. Then halt current operations until clear standards, oversight mechanisms and limits are publicly defined and agreed upon. This is not about surrendering federal authority. It is about restoring legitimacy.

Minnesota is a proud state, and Minneapolis at the moment is showing remarkable restraint under immense strain. But that restraint is not infinite. This is the moment for unity — not silence. Members of Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation are needed now. So are business leaders and institutional voices with access to federal power. This surge will end eventually. The damage may not.