Artist Edel Rodriguez published his new print, Minneapolis, just hours after a federal agent shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti on January 24. The print features a pop art image of President Donald Trump, mouth agape and gun in hand, kneeling on the neck of Lady Liberty, who’s slowly bleeding out on the street from multiple gunshot wounds.
The killing occurred during the weeks-long, federally ordered presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection, and other federal agencies in the Twin Cities, where those agents have raided residential neighborhoods, detained employees from local businesses, and taken multiple schoolchildren into custody in broad daylight. Pretti’s death came just weeks after Minneapolis resident Renee Good was shot and killed in her car during an encounter with an ICE agent.
Members of the Trump administration—including the president himself—have spent the days following these two tragedies suggesting that both Pretti and Good posed a threat to federal agents, despite available video evidence that appears to refute those claims.
As Minnesotans continue to witness ICE agents disrupting their local communities and targeting their neighbors, protest art has served a critical role in their collective movement against the surge of federal forces. Across Minneapolis, graffiti, yard signs, stickers, and even sleds with anti-ICE messages have exploded in popularity. Local screen-printing studios like Burlesque of North America and Art Price Studio have produced their own designs while also offering free printing services to protesters.
Now, in the wake of Pretti’s shooting, artists across the nation are using protest art to offer their support to the city—and to express their outrage at the federal government’s actions.
“These events are complex and can be easily manipulated,” Rodriguez says. “An image or a poster can cut through all of that and get to the heart of the matter. Many people feel they are alone in how they are feeling. Art helps people understand that they are not alone, that they are not imagining things.”
Minneapolis
Rodriguez’s concept for Minneapolis traces back to 2020, when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed resident George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. At the time, Rodriguez created an initial sketch of the scene, followed by another version several weeks later, he says, of Trump “doing the same to Lady Liberty.”
After witnessing the killings of Good and Pretti, Rodriguez created a new version of the illustration in which Trump is holding a gun over Lady Liberty’s prone form.
“All of these murders happened in the same city, and share one thing in common—disturbing violence and a disregard for human life by those in a position of authority,” Rodriguez says. “We talk about ICE or Border Patrol violating Americans’ civil rights, but the person responsible for the killings is Donald Trump. That’s where the idea for this image came from.”
Since 2016, Rodriguez has used his signature pop-art style to chronicle Trump’s time in office, drawing inspiration from political artists like John Heartfield, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann to use satirical work as a means of “documenting history for future generations.” Rodriguez, who grew up under Fidel Castro’s authoritarian regime in Cuba, says many of the Trump administration’s recent actions feel strikingly familiar.
“We are in a very dangerous time in this country,” he says. “Americans seem to have accepted the idea that being asked for their papers by masked men is acceptable. I grew up in a dictatorship in Cuba where this was commonplace, where people had no rights against search and seizure and no free speech. All Americans should be outraged that people are being targeted based on the color of their skin or their accent.”
What Kind of American Are You
Undoubtedly the most widely circulated and impactful imagery from the killings of Good and Pretti are the videos and stills of the events themselves—which citizens captured from several angles on the scene in both cases.
These videos have served as crucial touchpoints to fight back against the administration’s claims that Good and Pretti acted violently toward federal agents—when, indeed, all visual evidence points to the contrary. They also inspired James Herriot, an artist from Montana, to create his first pieces of protest art, which have since picked up considerable traction on Reddit.
“When I got up and saw the news of Alex Pretti’s killing I was shaking,” Herriot says. “I felt like I had just watched a malicious, completely avoidable, and yet entirely predictable train wreck. Watching that federal agent unload round after round into a civilian on the ground was absolutely sickening.”
As someone living in a deep red area of the U.S., he adds, there are only a few people in his circle that he can speak openly with, “so drawing sometimes feels like the only way I can process it.”
Herriot’s illustration, titled What Kind of American Are You, merges imagery from Pretti’s killing with a scene from the 2024 film Civil War. In the film, which imagines a fractured future America, an armed antagonist played by Jesse Plemons questions a group of journalists on their race and country of origin, executing any who don’t answer to his liking. The subtext of the scene is that Plemons’s character views whiteness as a proxy for Americaness.
“In this moment in the movie [Plemons’s character] is asking ‘What kind of American are you?’ to a group of strangers he intends to harm,” Herriot says. “I think that question hits on so many levels. . . . Are you one of ‘us’ or one of ‘them’ . . . Are you the right color . . . Were you born in the right place? Or even deeper, are you the kind of American who will stand for the values upon which our nation was supposedly founded, or one who will succumb to tribalism, hate, and party politics?”
In What Kind of American Are You, Plemons’s character is pictured with his recognizable red sunglasses and assault rifle hovering over Pretti’s prone form, while federal agents point a gun and a can of pepper spray at Pretti’s head. Since posting the work, Herriot says he’s received some reactions labeling the art as “propaganda” (which he believes “sort of proves the point of it”), though the overwhelming response has been supportive.
“I think protest art plays the same role that physical protests do,” Herriot says. “While it may not functionally, directly change anything, it shows people that they’re not alone. It shows others that not everyone in the world thinks the same way they do. It shows those in power that their actions or policies are not accepted by everyone.”
Don’t worry, I’ve got you
Topsy is a graffiti artist in Seattle, who asked to remain anonymous for this story due to possible retaliation. Topsy has been creating public protest art since Trump’s second inauguration, including designs in support of the No Kings protests, that depict ICE agents as pigs, and that satirize Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. News of Pretti’s death “bore a hole through my heart,” the artist says.
Topsy’s initial draft highlighted violent acts perpetrated by ICE. Ultimately, though, the artist decided to shift focus.
“From all accounts of his loved ones, Alex was the embodiment of someone who cared deeply about justice—lending himself to help others,” Topsy says. “This shows in all parts of his life, from his work as an ICU nurse at the VA, up to his last moments, protecting a woman before ICE executed him in retaliation. I realized that the strength of Alex’s light was far more powerful than the darkness of ICE. I wanted to make something beautiful that his parents could look at and be proud of him for that.”
The final work is titled Don’t worry, I’ve got you. It shows Pretti, who worked at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Hospital, wearing blue scrubs and a stethoscope. He’s leaning over to assist Lady Justice, who’s crumpled on the ground, wearing her symbolic blindfold. The image mirrors a moment seconds before Pretti’s death, when he attempted to help a fellow protester who had been pushed down by a federal agent.
Topsy selected a wall in First Hill, a Seattle neighborhood known for its high concentration of medical centers, as the site for the work. It’s now been viewed thousands of times in real life and across social media.
“In a time of many injustices, where even our own Department of Justice refuses to investigate the murders of citizens by ICE,” Topsy says, “I wanted to highlight that regular citizens like Alex are the true people who will pull Justice up from the trenches and make sure she sees another day.”