Politicians Fuel the Crises They Condemn

The death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is sad and tragic. A life lost is not a political win, a rhetorical prop, or a meme to be weaponized. Christians should be slow to speak, quick to grieve, and careful not to exploit the dead for moral leverage.

Grief, however, does not require us to stop thinking critically.

Sorrow does not absolve leaders who have spent years sowing contempt for law and order of responsibility for the climate they helped create.

The calamity is not random. It is cultivated.

“Scoffers set a city aflame, but the wise turn away wrath.”— Proverbs 29:8

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey publicly demanded that federal immigration agents "get the f*** out" of the city in response to controversial federal enforcement actions and fatal shootings, and later defended that language as grounded in outrage over loss of life.

That sounds like inviting wrath, and it's just the tip of the iceberg.

This Did Not Happen in a Vacuum

Minneapolis is a so-called sanctuary city. City officials and police are prohibited from cooperating with ICE in civil immigration enforcement: they may not inquire about immigration status, honor ICE detainers without a judicial warrant, or use city resources to assist federal agents.

The policy is sold as a way to preserve “community trust,” assuring residents that contact with local government will not trigger immigration consequences. The effect is not the absence of enforcement but its relocation—out of jails and administrative settings and into public spaces, where apprehensions are louder, riskier, and more likely to provoke confrontation.

Minneapolis does not attempt to bar ICE from operating inside the city, but it deliberately refuses to help, ensuring that enforcement happens in the most visible and volatile way possible.

The confrontation that ended Pretti’s life did not arise out of nowhere. It occurred in a city—and a broader culture—where law enforcement has been openly delegitimized, where sanctuary policies function as moral permission slips for defiance, and where elected officials and pundits have spent years insisting that enforcement itself is immoral.

When leaders repeatedly teach that the law is unjust, optional, or oppressive, they are not removing accountability. They are pushing conflict into the street.

Signal Fire

Minneapolis officials did not merely criticize federal immigration enforcement in public; they reinforced that posture in private. While Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz publicly condemned the ICE presence as dangerous and illegitimate, reporting later revealed that city leadership and senior staff were using encrypted Signal chats to coordinate responses and share internal reactions to the operation outside formal public channels.

According to press accounts and public-records disputes, those Signal communications reflected a consistent tone—hostility toward federal authority, dismissal of enforcement as a public-safety threat, and language that framed resistance as morally justified.

The messages were not operational commands, but they mattered all the same. They revealed how leaders spoke when they believed no one was listening.

The Bible warns us again:

“By the mouth of the wicked a city is overthrown.” — Proverbs 11:11

What is whispered among leaders does not stay private. It sets tone, grants permission, and shapes how others interpret authority. When officials mock restraint behind closed doors while condemning consequences in public, they should not be surprised when disorder follows.

Signal did not create the confrontation that followed. But it exposed how defiance was cultivated long before it reached the street—by leaders insulated from the risk they helped normalize.

Violence is not Order

One of the most destructive lies of modern politics is the idea that order is inherently cruel and that disorder is a form of compassion. Scripture knows nothing of this inversion.

“God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”— 1 Corinthians 14:33

Peace does not grow out of chaos. Mercy does not thrive where law is despised. Confusion is never baptized as virtue in the Bible—never in the home, never in the church, and never in society.

Wisdom literature goes further:

“By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just.”— Proverbs 8:15

Authority itself is not an accident. It is not a concession to sin. It is a gift meant to restrain evil and preserve peace. That does not sanctify every action taken by authorities—but it does destroy the lie that enforcement is, by definition, immoral.

Compassion Untethered from Truth Becomes Cruel

When compassion is severed from truth, it becomes reckless. I didn't let my young children run through the street. Sooner or later there would be a devastating event. When leniency is detached from order, it invites harm. This is how well-intended rhetoric produces real-world tragedy—not through malice, but negligence.

ICE did not appear in Minneapolis because leaders loved authority too much. It appeared because they refused to exercise it early, wisely, and lawfully. What might have been prevented with an ounce of restraint now requires a pound of cure—and the cure is always harsher than prevention.

That is not cruelty. It is reality.

A Word in a Moment of Sorrow

Christians should mourn Alex Pretti’s death sincerely. We should pray for his family. We should demand accountability wherever force was misused. And we should refuse to turn tragedy into a cudgel for false narratives.

But we must also tell the truth.

Societies do not unravel by accident. Leaders do not escape responsibility for the climates they create. And lawlessness—no matter how compassionately framed—always extracts a human cost.

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”— Psalm 11:3

We can mourn honestly. We can speak clearly. We can refuse the lie that chaos is kindness.

And we can insist—without apology—that order is not the enemy of mercy, but its necessary companion.