Thousands of New Yorkers, including a large contingent of nurses, gathered outside the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Manhattan for a vigil for Alex Pretti, the second person to be gunned down by federal agents amid the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
The massive crowd — estimated at up to 2,000 people — gathered outside the VA NY Harbor Healthcare System on E. 23rd St. near First Ave. in Kips Bay around 5 p.m.
People attend a vigil and memorial for Alex Pretti outside the Manhattan VA Hospital on Thursday, January 29, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Members of the crowd lit candles and carried signs that read, “Justice for Alex Pretti,” “Love melts ICE” and “Abolish ICE.” A statement by Pretti’s parents was read aloud.
“My fiancé, my mother and my two best friends are nurses. I’m here to support my heroes,” Rita Wade, a 39-year-old executive assistant from Queens, told a Daily News reporter at the vigil. “After COVID, nurses were heroes. And now one of them has been shot down on the streets of Minnesota. I’m here to support my heroes.”
People attend a vigil and memorial for Alex Pretti outside the Manhattan VA Hospital on Thursday, January 29, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was gunned down by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
“Nurses support nurses,” said 25-year-old Ana Gleson, an ICU Nurse living in Harlem, who was raised in Minnesota. “Alex was a clear representative of who and what we are. He was a nurse up until the last moments of his life. His last words were, ‘Are you OK?’”
People attend a vigil and memorial for Alex Pretti outside the Manhattan VA Hospital on Thursday, January 29, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Video from the scene showed Pretti trying to assist a woman after an ICE agent shoved her to the ground. He was then pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the pavement by several agents, one of them removing a gun from Pretti’s waistband, before two agents opened fire on him.
Though video shows that Pretti did not reach for his weapon, federal officials sought to portray Pretti as intent on killing federal agents, with Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin saying it “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
“They are committing heinous crimes, and we’re told not to believe what we see,” Brooklyn resident Manny Miravete, 51, said at the vigil. “It’s just devastating. We’re coming together as a community to fight hopelessness.”