Killing of armed Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti ignites 2A debate in conservative Shasta County

Since last week, when two ICE officers fired 10 rounds into the body of anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti on a street in Minneapolis, Americans from across the political spectrum have come to his defense. 

Concern about the federal government’s actions, perhaps surprisingly, is also coming from voices within Shasta’s deeply conservative majority — including some affiliated with the Cottonwood Militia, which has previously organized to support law enforcement during social justice protests.

Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse and American citizen, had a permit to openly carry a firearm. But his decision to do in Minneapolis led federal officials like FBI Director Kash Patel to accuse him of intending violence. 

“No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines,” Patel said, around the same time that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist.”

The focus on Pretti’s gun has concerned some who have supported the Trump administration and ICE actions more generally, including Woody Clendenen, one of the founders of the Cottonwood Militia, who recently moved to Texas but maintains involvement with the local group.

“I believe he absolutely had the right to carry while he was at the protest,” Clendenen told a reporter today. “That being said, you never have a right to impede law enforcement … I hope they conduct a transparent investigation to get to the bottom of it.” 

Dan Scoville, the current leader of the Cottonwood Militia, feels similarly. “Yes, we have a God-given right to protect ourselves,” Scoville told a reporter. “The Second Amendment is written for all of us, as long as you are a law abiding citizen. But, he added, Pretti “chose to be there and put himself in a dangerous situation.” 

Scoville also said that what’s unfolding in Minneapolis “could have benefited from better leadership,” referring not to President Donald Trump’s leadership but to that of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who Scoville accused of “allowing lawlessness.” 

Jesse Lane is also a member of the Cottonwood Militia where he helps run a summer survival camp for female youth. His perspective takes the issues further. Lane described ICE’s massive crackdown to a reporter yesterday as “authoritarianism.”

“I’m willing to lose friends over it,” Lane said, adding that “the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments are there for everyone.”

His mention of Constitutional protections mirrors others concerns about ICE actions over the last year, including the failure to produce warrants when arresting immigrants, targeting immigrants on the basis of their political beliefs, and the denial of an arrested immigrant’s right to due process, which together have posed concerns for constitutional violations of the Fourth, First, and Fifth Amendments respectively. 

Lane took particular issue with Shasta residents who have continued to honor Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old who shot three and killed two people during a 2020 protest in the state of Washington — while refusing to stand with Pretti, who also arrived at a protest armed. 

The militia member expressed empathy for those who choose to cross the border illegally due to the difficulty of their circumstances, as well as skepticism about the current administration’s motives for ICE actions. Lane also called out Trump for failing to keep pace with deportations under former President Barack Obama. “And there was no police state then,” he added. 

The rapid mobilization of militarized operatives — and the fear experienced by the communities they target — is something local businessman Carlos Zapata described as “feeling very third world to me.” 

Zapata has no formal affiliation with the Cottonwood Militia, but said he’s close to current members and has attended meetings in the past. He’s well known locally for his political organizing against COVID mandates during the pandemic, a time of particularly destabilization in Shasta County. One day before J6, a group of angry protestors stormed Shasta’s board of supervisors building and threatened supervisors over a combination of frustrations largely related to COVD mandates. 

In remarks to a reporter today, Zapata was careful to clarify that he’s not anti law enforcement. But he also likened ICE to an “occupying force,” suggesting that the debate over immigration policy is almost secondary to the current conduct of immigration enforcement. “Government overreach is government overreach,” Zapata said. 

While he continues to accuse the left of being overly compliant with the pandemic-era restrictions that still he feels were violations of individual liberties, Zapata says he sees the right’s uncritical support of ICE as a similar kind of “hypocrisy.” 

Asked if his current convictions are consistent with the highly publicized remarks he made at the county’s public meetings in 2020 — most famously his implication that he and others might be pushed to engage in a violent revolt against the government — Zapata said that his principles remain fundamentally the same even if his tactics and political perspective have changed.

Noting that he’s been a Democrat in the past, then a Republican, and now an independent, Zapata believes that certain issues can’t be cleanly categorized into partisan categories. He also noted that his perspective on ICE is partially shaped by the fact that he’s the son of immigrants, saying “it hits closer to home for me, I’m not saying we should have open borders … honest people should have a path to citizenship.”

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