On the morning of January 24, 2026, two U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot Alex Pretti about ten times in roughly five seconds on a street in Minneapolis.

Pretti was 37. He was an intensive care nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs — he spent his working life keeping veterans alive. He had a valid Minnesota permit to carry a firearm and no criminal record. He was filming an immigration enforcement operation and trying to direct traffic around it. News organizations that analyzed the bystander video concluded he was holding a cell phone, not a gun, and that an agent pulled the weapon out of his holster about a second before the shooting started. He was pinned to the ground by roughly six agents when they fired.

The Trump administration's first response was to call him a "domestic terrorist." The video didn't support it.

Within days, Eli Crane — the Republican who represents Arizona's 2nd Congressional District — went on camera to say what he thought should happen next.

"I think it's a communist insurrection. I really do. And I do think the president should invoke the Insurrection Act. The House Freedom Caucus is going to be pushing that up the chain of command this week."

What he was actually asking for

The Insurrection Act is not a slogan. It's an 1807 law that lets a president send federal military troops into an American city to enforce the law. It works by temporarily suspending the rule that normally keeps the military out of civilian policing.

So the sequence Crane was proposing is this: federal agents killed an unarmed American nurse in the street. Americans came out to protest. And the correct response, in his view, was to send in soldiers.

He didn't call for an investigation. He didn't call for the agents to be identified. He didn't ask a single question about what happened. He looked at a crowd of Americans upset that their government had killed their neighbor, called them communists, and asked the president to deploy the Army.

Almost every other Republican went the other direction

This is the part that separates Crane from a party-line vote. On this one, his own party was moving — and he ran the opposite way.

Within a day of the shooting, Republicans in Congress started speaking out. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska put it plainly: "ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties." She added that "lawfully carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American — especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed."

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined her in calling for independent investigations, with Cassidy saying the integrity of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security were "at stake." House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino demanded that ICE, Border Patrol and DHS officials come testify before his committee. Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota — who was at that moment running in a Republican primary for governor — called on everyone to "deescalate." Oversight Chair James Comer floated pulling the agents out of Minneapolis entirely.

And then there was Greg Abbott. Two days after the killing, the governor of Texas — one of the most aggressive immigration hardliners in American politics — said the White House needed to "recalibrate" how it was running enforcement.

Even Donald Trump had been more cautious. He'd threatened the Insurrection Act over Minnesota on January 15 — before Pretti was killed — and then backed off the very next day: "I don't think there's any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I'd use it. It's very powerful."

Crane wasn't following the president here. He was pushing him.

The people who stayed quiet, and the one who didn't

Most Republicans said nothing at all. That's its own kind of answer, and we've written about the ones who built the worst records on ICE by taking the money and refusing to say a word.

Minnesota's own House Speaker, Lisa Demuth, wouldn't even say whether she supported invoking the Insurrection Act in her own state — she offered "we need peace in Minnesota here" and left it there.

That's the company Crane broke from, and he broke from it in the direction of more force — a congressman from Arizona telling the president to militarize a city half a country away, over the killing of a man he never mentioned by name.

What his own constituents heard

Jonathan Nez, the former Navajo Nation president running against Crane in November, responded directly.

"What has unfolded over the last few weeks in Minnesota and across the country is heartbreaking and wrong. The loss of American citizens' lives is unacceptable — and this moment demands leaders across our country to end the violence and calm rising tensions. That's why I am so disturbed that Congressman Crane is calling for more incitement and escalation."

Nez, who says he believes in secure borders, drew the line at the tactics: "I don't believe in masked, heavily armed, and undertrained federal agents targeting American citizens."

And he raised something specific to the district Crane represents: "As an Indigenous American and former tribal leader, I am particularly troubled that first Americans, here in Arizona and around the country, have been detained."

That is not an abstract worry coming from him. Nez led the Navajo Nation. He is describing citizens whose families have been on this land longer than the United States has existed being detained by their own government — and his opponent's answer to the moment was to ask for soldiers.

He asked for troops. He won't take a question.

There's one more thing worth putting next to Crane's demand for the military.

He does not hold in-person town halls. His constituents have organized "empty chair" events because he won't come. His office runs telephone forums instead. He gives interviews to friendly outlets and skips the rest.

So he was willing to go on camera and call American protesters a communist insurrection. He has not been willing to stand in a room in Flagstaff or Prescott and let one of them ask him about it.

A congressman who wants the president to put soldiers on an American street should be able to explain that choice to the people who elected him. Crane has never had to.

We deserve better.

Source

Jonathan Nez Criticizes Rep. Crane's Call for Trump to Invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota — Levi Rickert, Native News Online, January 27, 2026.