Before it became the backdrop to a deadly shooting last week, Minneapolis’ Nicollet Avenue was best known for its remarkable variety of ethnic restaurants.
The Black Forest Inn has been serving German cuisine since 1965, and over the years new immigrant-owned restaurants have sprouted up to serve up Vietnamese banh mi, Chinese mapo tofu, Greek roast lamb, and many other dishes.
But recently, Nicollet Avenue — better known as Eat Street — has attracted a different crowd: armed Immigration Control Enforcement agents, who raided the area this month. It was on Nicollet, diagonally opposite the Black Forest Inn, where Alex Pretty was shot in the back by ICE agents on January 24.
Gina Christ, whose German immigrant father opened the restaurant, has kept the doors open this week not to sell food but to provide a warm place for people who have come to lay flowers, light candles or leave notes in memory of loved ones at a shrine across the street.
“It’s emotionally devastating,” Crist said of Preeti’s murder — and of the immigration crackdown he was protesting after she died. “This is a country that the people on this street believe in. And you go from feeling like we’re your ideal citizens, your ideal story of the American dream to… being irrelevant.”
Preeti’s murder came just three weeks after 37-year-old mother and poet Renee Nicole Good was shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The deadly violence at the hands of masked ICE agents — as well as Trump administration officials’ descriptions of Pretty’s killing, which conflict with widely shared video evidence — have drawn sharp reaction among Democrats and recent criticism from some Republicans.
Now, with pressure mounting in the wake of Preeti’s murder, Trump appears to be attempting reform on a key domestic policy, the immigration crackdown. He has been attacked by members of his own party and has seen his approval ratings decline over his efforts to tackle immigration. Even the National Rifle Association sided with Preeti over the administration.
On Monday, Trump said he was sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, a move that was seen as weakening Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He is also expected to recall top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino from Minneapolis.
Some Republicans applauded the prospect of a chastised Bovino, who has drawn attention for his double-breasted greatcoat and for personally throwing tear gas canisters at protesters in Minneapolis. He drew criticism for his claim, without providing evidence, that Preeti intended to commit a “massacre” of federal agents.
Among Bovino’s Republican critics was Jack Duckworth, a Republican state senator in Minnesota and member of the state National Guard, who spoke out against the use of violence and heavy-handed tactics by the Border Patrol.
“It became clear to me and to most of the people in our state that the strategy, the approach, was not giving us the results that people were comfortable with,” Duckworth said. “I called for a pause and reassessment and adjustment of strategy.”
On Monday, as US media reported that Trump was preparing to move Bovino, the president found time to talk to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – Kamala Harris’s running mate and a frequent target of the president’s insults – and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey. Trump said he and Walz were “on the same wavelength”.
Later, Frey said some ICE agents would begin leaving Minneapolis by Tuesday after talks with Trump, who agreed that the current situation could not continue.
After several difficult weeks, Minneapolis seemed to be cooling down. Immigrant rights activists tracking their movements said ICE agents were still roaming the streets in dark vehicles. But there were few, if any, signs of violent confrontation in recent weeks.
Yet immigrant rights advocates say they will not let down their vigilance. He doesn’t trust Trump and has vowed to keep fighting until ICE raids end.
“We don’t want (the administration) to lose some traction in terms of publicity and then continue a campaign of terror against our immigrant neighborhoods,” said Andrew Baumgartner, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in northeast Minneapolis.
“We need to stop the violence on the streets, and we need to stop the raids and we need to stop the kidnappings,” Baumgartner said. “Anything less than that is inadequate.”
Civil rights lawyer and monitor Will Stancil said he was pleased to see Bovino removed, who he said “was clearly behind the armored convoys that fired tear gas in Minneapolis”.
But he is not sure it will mark a meaningful change.
“There are still thousands of ICE agents, so it’s hard to see how it would feel any better here if you’re still taking people off the street,” Stancil said.
On Nicollet Avenue, usually a lively place, a sense of mourning prevails in the area around the spot of Preeti’s death. Some restaurants and shops like the Black Forest Inn were not open for business after Preeti’s murder. But people also braved zero degree temperatures to leave notes, stand in silence or take photographs.
“It’s heartbreaking from the beginning to the end of the story,” says Christ. “Everyone’s worst nightmare is that it ends in murder.”
