The tech community is speaking out after federal agents carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday.
It marked the third shooting by a federal agent in the city this month and the second deadly one. Meanwhile, similar shootings in other parts of the country have occurred.
The death of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who worked as a nurse at Veterans Administration hospital in Minnesota, appeared to have been a tipping point in the backlash against the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation policy.
While many in the tech sector initially welcomed Trump’s embrace of deregulation and cryptocurrencies or backed off their traditional Democratic stance, Saturday’s killing at the hands of Border Patrol officers set off a wave of criticism.
Here are other tech leaders speaking out:
Paul Graham, Y Combinator cofounder: “If someone had predicted before the last election that if Trump won, federal officers would be shooting Americans in the streets, he’d have been dismissed as an alarmist.”
“This is an organized illegal insurgency, and should be treated as such,” he posted. “Echoes of whiskey rebellion. If it was the right doing this, it would be back to back as a threat on the news, and the left would put it down. But the GOP right does not know how to use power and discipline.”
