Nurses, Veterans, Families Tearfully Mourn Alex Pretti at Aurora Vigil

Healthcare workers, veterans and Denver-area residents honored Alex Pretti, the nurse who was fatally shot over the weekend by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, with a vigil outside the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora on Wednesday, January 28.

“That shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Kayla Rojas, a professional caretaker, told Westword. “I think I would know the kind of person he is, and he would want people to look around and help each other, especially out here in Aurora.”

Pretti was fatally shot on January 24 by federal agents with Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. His death was captured on video from multiple angles, which showed that Pretti tried to help a protester before being wrestled by a scrum of federal agents and then shot multiple times. It came a couple of weeks after Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis.

Rojas admired that Pretti was a nurse for an intensive care unit, remarking that “they’re always going to run to help. It’s in them…that shouldn’t happen to anyone, but especially not an ICU nurse.”

National Nurses United, one of the country’s largest nurse unions, organized the vigil, which was set up near the intersection of East Colfax Avenue and Wheeling Street. Nurses from across the metro came in sympathy.

“Just knowing he was a nurse, you know a lot about him,” Jeane Collinson, a registered nurse from Littleton, told Westword. “Nurses are special people. …We deal with people everyday, and we believe that people deserve care. It doesn’t matter who they are.”

Attendees rested flowers by a large picture of Pretti, holding up signs reading, “Nurses Care for All People” and “Nurses Care. No Exceptions.” The crowd glowed with small electric candles and warmly encircled people giving speeches. Speakers mentioned Pretti’s parents, who live in Colorado, and thanked him for his work as a nurse and activist, while other attendees protested ICE’s detention of immigrants.

ICE detention centers, including the one in Aurora, were compared to concentration camps in a speech by Rabbi Michael Kengmana from First Unitarian Society of Denver, where immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra lived in 2019 while avoiding ICE arrest. Vizguerra was also detained in the Aurora ICE facility in 2025.

“It’s not just the murders, but there are many ways to destroy a life,” Kengmana said in reference to Pretti and Good. “All the people taken by ICE and detained in those concentration camps called ‘detention centers.’ And, as a Jew, I use the term ‘concentration camp’ knowing exactly what I’m talking about.”

The American Immigration Council estimates that about 73,000 immigrants are in detention nationwide as of mid-January. The Aurora ICE facility reportedly has about 1,400 people a time, but ICE plans to open more detention centers in Colorado.

Pretti and Good were killed amid resistance to Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigration enforcement campaign that’s been unfolding in the Minneapolis area since December. The Minnesota Attorney General filed a lawsuit to stop the operation on January 12; on Wednesday, January 28, the City of Denver announced that it joined the lawsuit with three dozen other local governments across the country.

The vigil was largely somber and emotional, with speeches bringing people to tears.

“I see Alex as an example of what to strive for. Alex was making this a safe place for everybody,” Navy veteran Luke O’Guin said in tearful speech. “As a veteran, you’re told every single day that what you’re doing is for the good and safety of the country, and when you’re faced with seeing the best of this world ripped from it by the same system you were told to protect, it hurts. It crushes you on the inside.”

Families were also at the vigil, with kids watching speeches from their parents’ shoulders as they held electric candles. Nate Paul took his two kids and an American flag, “because I’m just trying to raise good citizens,” like Pretti, he said.

“I like to think that there’s a lot more Alex Pretti’s out there,” Paul added. “I would like to think what he did is what the vast majority of Americans would do. He stood up not just for his fellow citizens, but his fellow humans. I really feel like that’s the majority of sentiments in the country right now.”