BREAKING: National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman composes a powerful poem about the tragic murder of Alex Pretti at the hands of Trump’s masked enforcers.
Gorman is well known for writing and delivering her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration and previously penned a poem about the killing of Renee Good.
National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s Poetic Response to the Killing of Alex Pretti
In the wake of one of the most controversial and deeply unsettling incidents of the year, Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate known worldwide for her stirring inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb,” has again turned to verse to give voice to national grief and moral outrage.
On January 24, 2026, 37‑year‑old ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti was killed in Minneapolis during a federal immigration enforcement operation, part of an aggressive campaign that had already ignited widespread protest and tension across the city and the nation. Pretti — a U.S. citizen and frontline health worker — was fatally shot by federal agents during a confrontation near a protest against the expansion of immigration enforcement operations, including those led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.
In the days that followed, questions swirled around the official narrative released by federal authorities. Video evidence and eyewitness accounts contradicted claims by federal officials that Pretti posed a lethal threat before being shot. Instead, footage showed Pretti holding a phone among bystanders and not brandishing a weapon when agents confronted him — a detail that has intensified national scrutiny and debate over the use of force.
Amid this national reckoning, Gorman published a new poem titled “For Alex Jeffrey Pretti” — a powerful, unflinching piece that frames Pretti’s death not merely as tragedy, but as a rupture in America’s promise to its own people.
In her lines, Gorman opens with a stark admission of collective grief:
“We wake with
no words, just woe & wound.”
She describes the act of a government agent shooting an American citizen as more than brutality — a “jarring betrayal” that tests the bonds of trust between state and society. Her poem reverberates with moral urgency, insisting that the nation’s true threat is not those who come from outside its borders, but the loss of conscience and compassion within.
Gorman’s verses move from lamentation toward a hopeful call to action:
“If we cannot find words, may
we find the will; if we ever lose hope,
may we never lose our humanity.”
For Gorman, poetry becomes a means of communal reckoning — not only mourning a life lost, but challenging the conditions that allowed such a loss to occur. Her poem explicitly names the institutional actor responsible — ICE — and situates Pretti’s death within the larger context of ongoing protests and demands for accountability surrounding federal immigration enforcement.
This is not the first time Gorman has used her voice in poetry to respond to moments of national pain. Previously, she composed works honoring Renee Good, the Minneapolis mother who was also killed by a federal agent earlier that month, and drew attention to the mounting unrest unfolding across the United States.
Her latest work has resonated widely online, with readers and commentators noting its forceful moral clarity. Many have shared Gorman’s lines as a call for empathy and collective responsibility — urging Americans to remember and honor the lives lost, while pressing for justice and reform.
The poem, and the broader conversation it has sparked, arrives at a moment of intense national debate: protests continue across multiple cities, legal challenges to federal operations are underway, and bipartisan calls for investigation and accountability have surged in the weeks since Pretti’s death.
In this charged environment, Gorman’s voice — shaped by both personal grief and national concern — stands as both tribute and challenge: calling not only for remembrance of Alex Pretti, but for a reaffirmation of the humanity and conscience that define a just society.
If you’d like, I can also write an expanded analysis of Gorman’s poem line by line — exploring its themes, imagery, and cultural significance in the context of national politics.
“For Alex Jeffrey Pretti”
Murdered by I.C.E. January 24, 2026
by Amanda Gorman
We wake with
no words, just woe
& wound. Our own country shoot
ing us in the back is not just brutal
ity; it’s jarring betrayal; not enforcement,
but execution. A message: Love your people & you
will die. Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders
among us, but those among us who never look
within. Fear not the those without papers, but those
without conscience. Know that to care intensively,
united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today
& a profound, daring hope for tomorrow. We can feel
we have nothing to give, & still belove this world wait
ing, trembling to change. If we cannot find words, may
we find the will; if we ever lose hope, may we never lose our
humanity. The only undying thing is mercy, the courage to open
ourselves like doors, hug our neighbor,
& save one more bright, impossible life.
Please like and share.
