Did a Border Patrol officer kill Alex Pretti in self defence after being alerted that he was carrying a gun in a chaotic scramble to arrest him? Or did he execute the anti-ICE protester in cold blood after he was disarmed? The truth is that it is difficult to know. Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minnesota.

Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus

Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus. Trump opponents post freeze-frames and selective snippets of the horrible video to hammer home their assertion of out-of-control ICE death squads. The media, eager for click-generating hysteria, fail to report on laws that protect officers when they shoot to kill in self defence if a gun is sighted during an arrest. Trump supporters, meanwhile, post red circles around Pretti’s hand to suggest he was reaching for his gun.

Pretti is held up as martyr for justice, or a crazed radical, depending on what your social-media algorithm shows you. But the truth about him seems neither black or white.

He’s no conventional leftie radical. He can be seen in a video circulating on social media reading out a final salute to a dead veteran: ‘Today we remember that freedom is not free, we have to work at........

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