Hundreds gathered outside the Jesse Brown Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center on the Near West Side to honor Alex Pretti, who was shot to death Saturday by two Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, as well as all others killed by federal immigration enforcement.
Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen born in northwest suburban Streamwood, worked as an ICU nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Minnesota.
The group, many of them nurses still wearing badges after walking from their nearby workplaces, performed a Nightingale Tribute — a traditional send off for nurses — while calling for ICE to be abolished and pushing for a general strike modeled after one in Minneapolis.
“We are demanding more from our representatives than just strongly worded letters, or Tweets, or grandiose speeches romanticizing the sacrifice of others,” Michael Applegate, a Navy veteran, told the crowd Wednesday evening. “Put some skin in the game or get out of the way, because we will not stand for your cowardice or complicity any longer.”
Hours earlier, Gov. JB Pritzker visited the makeshift memorial outside the Veteran’s Hospital, leaving a bouquet of white flowers. A day earlier, health care workers held a rally at the same site to demand accountability in Pretti’s slaying.
Gov. JB Pritzker and American Federation of Government Employees National Vice President Jason Anderson place flowers at a memorial for Alex Pretti outside of Jesse Brown VA Medical Center on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.
Jacquelyn Ceplecha, an emergency room nurse and rapid responder, said people want ICE off the streets and for the violence to end.
“Stop letting ICE come back,” Ceplecha said after the rally. Illinois politicians “kept talking about how ‘We won’t stand for this,’ but yet we saw ICE active and hurting people in our city.”
Pretti was the third person shot in Minnesota by federal agents this month. Pretti was shot a mile from where Renee Macklin Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, was killed by an ICE agent Jan. 7. Another man, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis of Venezuela, was shot in his leg Jan. 15.
That’s in addition to the two people feds fired on in the Chicago area last year: Silverio Villegas Gonzales, who an agent shot to death last September, and Marimar Martinez, who was shot and survived, later to be charged and subsequently acquitted of federal charges.
The two agents who fired 10 shots into Pretti’s back have been placed on administrative leave since Saturday, according to DHS officials, who seem to be walking back rhetoric after reportedly demoted Border Patrol Cmdr.-at-large Greg Bovino accused Pretti of wanting to “slaughter” law enforcement agents without any evidence.
Bovino was expected to leave Minneapolis Tuesday after being replaced by border czar Tom Homan.
But the crowd wasn’t satisfied with those developments.
Some speakers called for money from immigration enforcement to be redirected to health care.
Dennis Kosuth, a Cook County nurse, was among them.
Kosuth called on people to recognize the “state sanctioned violence” of unaffordable health care. He said it’s all one issue.
Some politicians blame the city’s crime or the lack of health care on immigrants, he said. “That’s a lie,” Kosuth said. “It’s because they spent all your money on ICE. The billionaires and their lackeys in Congress are criminals.”