{"id":17672,"date":"2026-01-26T07:24:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T15:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17672"},"modified":"2026-01-28T08:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:10:17","slug":"believe-your-eyes-the-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17672","title":{"rendered":"“Believe Your Eyes”, The Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

People are risking their lives to document agents in Minneapolis.By Charlie Warzel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Arthur Maiorella \/ Anadolu \/ Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

JANUARY 25, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chances are, you\u2019ve seen Richard Tsong-Taatarii\u2019s photo. Taken Wednesday in Minneapolis, it shows an unidentifiable protester face down<\/a> on the ground; two Border Patrol agents are on top of him, holding him there, while a third unloads pepper spray into his face from just inches away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photo ran on the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune<\/em> on Friday and already feels like a defining image of the long ICE incursion in Minneapolis\u2014a powerful illustration of how the agency has acted, in broad daylight, with excessive force and impunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is just one example of federal agents terrorizing people in the city. There\u2019s also the photo<\/a> of a 5-year-old boy being detained outside his home. There\u2019s the video<\/a> of an agent chasing a teenager through the snow on a residential street as the boy yells \u201cI\u2019m legal\u201d in Spanish. And yesterday, the world saw footage of Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked<\/a> in the ICU of a Veterans Affairs hospital, as agents pepper-sprayed him, knocked him down, appeared to remove a legally permitted gun<\/a> from his person, and fired at least 10<\/a> bullets into his prone body. (Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has claimed that the agents were the \u201creal victims\u201d<\/a> and suggested that they were acting in self-defense.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are still unknowns in this case, as there are in many of the chaotic moments that have come out of ICE\u2019s recent surge in Minneapolis. But there are basic facts: Pretti was helping a woman when agents swarmed him. He did not have a gun in his hand. In the past 18 days, agents have used excessive force against numerous people in Minneapolis and killed two of them\u2014first Renee Good<\/a>, now Pretti. We know about this violence\u2014we can see it ourselves from numerous angles\u2014largely because of video and photographic evidence taken by everyday citizens, many of whom have purposefully set out to make sure that they are recording what is happening for the world to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsong-Taatarii credits these volunteers, many of whom are trying to protect their neighbors, for his now-famous shot. On Wednesday, Tsong-Taatarii had been following Bovino but realized that was \u201ca wild goose chase,\u201d and was alerted by a group to an escalating situation in South Minneapolis. He drove over and got the photo. When I spoke with him on Friday, he told me that protest observers have set up Signal group chats, which help track agents\u2019 movements across the city. He uses the chats to make sure he can be in the right place at the right time to document what is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it still is not clear why this matters, compare the documented reality with the Trump administration\u2019s blatant propaganda. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement yesterday that Pretti \u201cwanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.\u201d Similarly, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller<\/a> called Pretti a \u201cwould-be assassin\u201d who \u201ctried to murder federal law enforcement.\u201d Video footage directly contradicts these claims. It shows Pretti holding a phone in his hand, pointing it at an agent after another shoved a woman. He was shot again and again while on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full evidence around Pretti\u2019s death has not yet been released. If he was indeed filming agents before he was shot, there is likely first-person footage on his phone. But Pretti\u2019s last seconds were captured from multiple angles, in sickening footage widely distributed on social media and by news organizations. It is able to be seen and dissected online precisely because of the observers who were there to document it, who watched as federal agents piled atop Pretti and who did not drop their phones when the gunshots rang out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work of observers and photographers in Minneapolis right now is as dangerous as it is crucial, because ICE\u2019s presence in Minneapolis is provoking not only physical conflict but an informational conflict. Agents themselves are pulling out their phones during altercations with protesters. According to The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, the White House has urged ICE to \u201cproduce videos for social media of immigrant arrests and confrontations to portray its push for mass deportation as critical to protecting the American way of life.\u201d Last week, President Trump posted on Truth Social that ICE must \u201cstart talking about\u201d the people they\u2019re arresting in Minnesota, writing<\/a>: \u201cShow the Numbers, Names, and Faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW.\u201d When the footage doesn\u2019t suit the administration, it seems to have no issue doctoring images to suit its alternate reality, as it did on Thursday. Agents had arrested an attorney who was protesting at a local church, and the White House posted a photo of this woman that was altered, presumably by AI, to make it look like she was crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dark irony of our current age is that there is more video and photographic evidence than ever before, and yet propagandists can coerce or convince others to not believe what they can see with their own eyes. (See also: January 6, 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the truth is ever to win out over propaganda, it can only do so in the face of overwhelming evidence, the collection of which has become ever more treacherous in the second year of Trump\u2019s second presidency. But the news and footage of Pretti\u2019s death seems to have broken through the usual informational chaos\u2014at least to some extent. On Reddit<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, and Facebook<\/a> pages, the videos of Pretti\u2019s last moments appear to have galvanized<\/a>people who don\u2019t normally engage<\/a> or post about politics. And it is thanks to the bystander videos of Pretti\u2019s killing that people are trying to hold the administration accountable. This morning, the CNN host Dana Bash referenced the footage in an interview with Bovino, asking him why Pretti was shot after being disarmed. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to adjudicate that here on TV in one freeze frame,\u201d Bovino replied. \u201cIt\u2019s not a freeze frame,\u201d Bash said. \u201cWe\u2019re showing a video of one of your agents taking the gun away. And that happened before Pretti was shot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minneapolis residents are risking their lives to document what is happening to their city. In Pretti\u2019s case, doing so cost him everything. We should believe what we can see with our own eyes. One can only imagine what Miller and the administration might have said about the shooting and Pretti if there weren\u2019t an abundance of footage. Thankfully, because of the observers, the world can see for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Charlie Warzel<\/a> is a staff writer at The Atlantic<\/em> and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain<\/a>, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People are risking their lives to document agents in Minneapolis.By Charlie Warzel JANUARY 25, 2026 Chances are, you\u2019ve seen Richard Tsong-Taatarii\u2019s photo. Taken Wednesday in Minneapolis, it shows an unidentifiable protester face down on the ground; two Border Patrol agents are on top of him, holding him there, while a third unloads pepper spray into his face from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17683,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672\/revisions\/17683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}