Amanda Gorman shared a powerful poem on Instagram that she wrote in honor of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen killed by a federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday.
The poem, “For Alex Jeffrey Pretti,” characterizes Pretti’s killing as a “betrayal” and an “execution.”
Gorman, earlier this month, also paid tribute to Renee Nicole Good, another U.S. citizen killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. In a caption accompanying another poem shared on Instagram, Gorman said she was “horrified by the ongoing violence that ICE wages upon our community. Across our country, we are witnessing discrimination and brutality on an unconscionable scale.”
Her poem says, in part: “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.”
The 27-year-old writer and activist famously recited her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in 2021. Gorman has also written poems in the wake of other tragedies in the country, including “Hymn for the Hurting,” about the Robb Elementary mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. She also performed a poem she wrote about reproductive rights and the Roe V. Wade Supreme Court case in a NowThis video in 2019.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.