I got out my soapbox today. Yeah, big surprise, right?

This is the letter I sent to my Senators on the issue in the link below.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti was killed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) -- hundreds of miles away from any U.S. border -- in Minneapolis on Saturday, January 24.

Alex was 37-years old, a U.S. Citizen, and a certified nurse. Now, he’s dead.

Pretti’s last action before being shot while on the ground with at least 5 agents restraining him was trying to help a woman who was being physically assaulted by the masked agents who would then kill him.

They are not the first.

They will not be the last.

United States citizens and persons legally protected from deportation in the United States are being arrested, detained, murdered or “disappeared” without valid cause or due process.

We have seen this before. The entire world fought a global war against it, almost a century ago.

Anne Frank, one of the victims of that war, wrote in her diary 13 June 1943: “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a rucksack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone.”

Less than a year later, Anne was dead at the age of 15, from an illness contracted in an overcrowded concentration camp.

There really is no difference between the camps of Nazi Germany and the detention centers (and prisons) the current government is using.

The methods of removal are identical.

The terror they evoke and instill is identical.

George Santayana wrote that “Those who do not learn from their histories are condemned to repeat them.”

He was an optimist, for believing that we can learn.

George Hegel, however, may have been correct. He wrote that “The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

This must stop.

The senate will vote on whether or not to continue funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), possibly as soon as this week.

In Minnesota and across the country, ICE is operating as if it is above the law, aggressively carrying out violent operations in broad daylight with impunity. No American should ever have to fear being stopped, brutalized, disappeared, or killed by armed federal agents because of their accent, skin color, or political beliefs. Not now. Not ever.

You must use your power to stop ICE and end the killing and terror immediately. You must vote against more money for DHS.

This is not an extreme position coming from the fringe. This is a demand coming from the American people. I’m asking you to publicly commit to vote against funding the Department of Homeland Security now!