MINNEAPOLIS — On Sunday afternoon, as the sun shone clear and bright through another subzero day here, mourners gathered around a patch of snow on Nicollet Avenue to pay their respects to Alex Pretti, the man fatally shot on that spot the day before by federal immigration agents. Where the previous evening the air had been filled with tear gas, now there were only folk hymns rising on a hundred voices, on their way up to meet the now omnipresent drone of a police helicopter.
People brought flowers and wreaths, lit candles, and draped stethoscopes over a wooden cross as a makeshift memorial to the intensive care unit nurse. Through layers of bundled down and wool they hugged each other. Beneath ski goggles, tears streamed.
