Photo: Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images
Amanda Gorman has shared a powerful new poem honoring Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen who was killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, using poetry once again to document grief, injustice, and national reckoning.
Gorman posted the poem, titled “For Alex Jeffrey Pretti,” on Instagram over the weekend. In the piece, she describes Pretti’s killing as both a “betrayal” and an “execution,” framing the violence as a rupture between the state and the people it claims to protect.
“We wake with / no words, just woe / & wound,” the poem begins. “Our own country shoot / ing us in the back is not just brutal / ity; it’s jarring betrayal; not enforcement / but execution.”
The poem arrives amid widespread outrage over Pretti’s death and renewed scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement, particularly as questions mount around accountability and use of force.
Earlier this month, Gorman also used her platform to honor Renee Nicole Good, another U.S. citizen killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. In a separate Instagram post accompanying that poem, Gorman wrote that she was “horrified by the ongoing violence that ICE wages upon our community,” adding that the country is witnessing “discrimination and brutality on an unconscionable scale.”
Her poem for Good included the lines:
“You could believe departed to be the dawn / When the blank night has so long stood. / But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone, / When they forever are so fiercely Good.”
Gorman has emphasized that her work is meant not only to mourn individual lives, but to remember all those lost to state violence. In her post honoring Good, she also referenced others killed by ICE, including Keith Porter Jr., and noted that dozens of people have died in ICE custody in recent years.
The 27-year-old poet, who became a global figure after reciting “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, has repeatedly turned to poetry in moments of national crisis. Her past work has addressed the Uvalde school shooting, reproductive rights, and racial injustice, positioning poetry as both memorial and resistance.
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