In the weeks leading up to the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Minneapolis was marked by a growing sense of unease as federal immigration agents increased their presence in neighborhoods where residents already felt over-policed and under-protected.
Rumors of aggressive tactics circulated alongside firsthand accounts of raids that blurred the line between enforcement and intimidation. This atmosphere created a simmering fear—especially among immigrants, artists, and activists—who felt they were being singled out not just for their status, but for their voices and visibility. When Good, a poet known for speaking truth to power, and Pretti, a healthcare worker committed to serving vulnerable patients, were killed, the tension snapped into open outrage. Protests erupted almost immediately, fueled by grief but also by a deeper sense of betrayal: two people who embodied service and expression had been met with state violence instead of protection.
Valencia Walker and Maria Bonn—two writers whose recent columns confront the human and societal fallout of federal immigration enforcement were guests on The Fulcrum Roundtable. Their work becomes a lens through which broader national fractures come into focus.
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Walker’s column, Alex Pretti’s Death Is a Code Blue for the U.S., is highlighted as a central point of discussion. Her work emphasizes the vulnerability of healthcare workers—like Pretti—who find themselves caught in the crosshairs of aggressive immigration enforcement. She argues that the killing demands accountability and collective action, urging the public to defend civil rights and protect those who serve communities in crisis. Walker’s perspective is rooted in both advocacy and urgency, reflecting a broader concern about the normalization of state violence.
Bonn’s article, Word Kill: Politics Can Be Murder on Poetry, expands the conversation beyond law enforcement and into the cultural realm. By connecting the killing of poet Renee Nicole Good to a long lineage of persecuted truth-tellers—from Federico García Lorca to contemporary academics—Bonn underscores how political repression often targets artists first. Her analysis suggests that the death of a poet is not merely a tragedy but a warning: when societies silence their storytellers, they erode the foundations of democratic discourse.
Through the voices of Walker and Bonn, the conversation confronts the intertwined crises of violence, censorship, and institutional distrust. Their insights remind viewers that understanding these events is not just an intellectual exercise—it is essential to navigating the stakes of this moment.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain.