Politics
The far-left network that helped put Alex Pretti in harm’s way, then made him a martyr
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The skirmish that led to Saturday’s fatal shooting of an agitator by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis and the response that followed were driven by a complex network of far-left organizations with a wide range of causes, a Fox News Digital investigation found.
A coordinated web of encrypted chats, street alerts and tracking of ICE “Abductors” in a sophisticated database reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that agitators were already mobilized at the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed minutes before any shots were fired.
ICE and Border Patrol agents were there to arrest an illegal immigrant criminal, and Pretti and others were there, outside a donut shop, to meet them as part of a strategic pattern of organized interference with law enforcement operations.
Over the following hours, a national network of socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist cells in the United States leveraged the tragic fatality into a nationwide protest operation. While grief and outrage over Pretti’s death is genuine, the network’s real-time rapid response, using short sensational video clips and emojis as weapons of propaganda, offers a window into the disciplined logistics, messaging and coordination of far-left warriors fomenting insurgency-like confrontation with authorities.
VANCE CALLS MINNEAPOLIS UNREST ‘ENGINEERED CHAOS’ AFTER DEADLY SHOOTING
“Rapid Responders” swarmed to the site of Glam Doll Donuts before the shooting occurred, documenting alleged ICE vehicles in the area in a sophisticated tracking database. (“MN ICE DATABASE”)
“This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities,” Vice President JD Vance observed in a Sunday post on X.
The encrypted Signal messages obtained by Fox News Digital in real time show that anti-ICE “rapid responders” were actively tracking, broadcasting and summoning “backup” around federal agents outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue, where the shooting happened. Local “rapid responders” made at least 26 entries into a database called “MN ICE Plates” in the critical hours before and after the killing, documenting the license plate numbers and details of alleged ICE vehicles they claimed to see around Nicollet Avenue.
The entry at row 344 read, “At the nicollet [sic] murder,” chronicling a black Jeep Wagoneer at the location with agents allegedly “involved in shooting.” Row 338 had a “Glam Doll Donuts” entry, tracking a black Ford Taurus.
BONDI BLAMES MINNEAPOLIS LEADERS AFTER ARMED SUSPECT KILLED, UNREST ERUPTS DURING ICE OPERATION
Members of an ICE Watch “Rapid Response” team tracked federal agents to the street, calling on more protesters to come to the street, where an anti-ICE demonstrator was killed minutes later. (Obtained by Fox News Digital)
At 9:50 a.m. ET, just before the killing, a user identified as “Willow” shared a 22-second video on an encrypted Signal chat for anti-ICE “rapid responders.”
“26and 3rd,” wrote “Willow,” quickly following up with, “Outside Glam Doll.”
The video showed two agents, one wearing a vest marked “POLICE,” studying the front door of Glam Doll before walking away, past a sign in the window that read, “ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA.”
As the camera rolled, the person filming yelled, “No!”
The camera followed the agents as they returned to a maroon Dodge Durango, passing another sign in the window that read, “ALL WELCOME HERE.”
In the video, someone shouted, “Get out of here!”
Just three minutes later, at 9:53 a.m. ET, a second Signal user, “Salacious B. Crumb,” escalated the alert, summoning additional responders and citing the same vehicle and agents.
“Backup needed at the Black Forest Inn parking lot on Nicollet Ave just south of 26th Street,” the message read.
DHS SAYS ICE AGENTS RAMMED BY VEHICLES AMID MINNEAPOLIS ENFORCEMENT SURGE: ‘AGGRESSIVELY ASSAULTED’
“Multiple vehicles with many agents appear to be staging there,” the alert continued. “One confirmed ICE vehicle seen was a maroon Dodge Durango [plate number], but it has driven away northbound on Nicollet.” Fox News Digital has redacted the Florida license plate number included in the original message.
ICE Assistant Director Marcos Charles said Sunday that the violence on the streets was “not a coincidence,” considering the “chaos and mayhem” that agitators are fomenting in Minneapolis. At the same press conference, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino confirmed that Pretti was “on the scene several minutes” before the fatal shooting.
Video of the scene shows that as Pretti stepped into the middle of Nicollet Avenue to direct traffic, fellow agitators could be heard blowing whistles to alert locals that ICE officers were around. Soon after, Pretti ended up in a street confrontation with CBP agents, across the street from Glam Doll Donuts outside a worn storefront marked “NEW AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT CENTER,” a nonprofit focused on immigration entry programs for Somalis.
Within minutes, at about 10:05 a.m. ET, at least one CBP agent shot Pretti, killing him.
MINNESOTA ICE OFFICIAL URGES PROTESTS TO REMAIN PEACEFUL AMID TENSIONS ‘LIKE NOTHING I’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE’
At 10:18 a.m. ET, the Signal network erupted.
Using a red phone emoji to signal an all-points alert, a message blasted out: “☎️ easy. URGENT: observers urgently requested at glam doll donuts @ 26th & nicollet [sic],” the alert continued. “an observer has been shot by ice, unknown condition, emts [emergency medical technicians] present, please be safe. EDIT: medics requested to join perimeter in case agents start gassing. be aware there are many agents and mpd [Minneapolis Police Department] officers present.”
Within minutes, far-left activists descended on Nicollet Avenue. Soon after, a video showed corrugated boxes of supplies apparently lined up on a Minneapolis sidewalk for protesters, including boxes marked “DESINER MASKS” [sic] and “FREE WINTER HATS,” next to piles of bottled water.
MINNESOTA AGITATORS STALK, PELT BORDER PATROL AGENTS WITH FOOD AND SPIT AT GAS STATIONS, DHS SAYS
Within hours, socialist leaders turbocharged their “rapid responders” in Minneapolis and mobilized street protesters from New York City to Los Angeles.
Media outlets, including CNN and MSNOW, described “angry protesters” but failed to identify the ideological networks behind the mobilization, even as protesters flashed their signs with their logos and names, touting socialism, communism and Marxism, on camera.
The Minneapolis activation marked the beginning of an almost instantaneous weekend surge by far-left organizations, including hardened socialist and communist groups operating in an ecosystem that national security experts describe as an insurgent-style operation designed to exploit tragedy to wage a domestic political war.
The strategy mirrors past mobilizations, including the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in May 2020, and exploits well-intentioned public sympathy by rapidly framing Pretti — an intensive care unit nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital — as a symbol of resistance, much like Renee Good, the first victim of an ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
Just as they responded in real-time to mobilize “comrades” to march on the streets within 12 hours of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in early January, socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist groups now frame their activation as an action within the “belly of the beast” against the “hyperimperialism” of the United States.
VANCE CALLS MINNEAPOLIS UNREST ‘ENGINEERED CHAOS’ AFTER DEADLY SHOOTING
Propagandists for socialist groups, including BreakThrough News, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, sprang into action to demonize federal officials after Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis. (BreakThrough News/X, Party for Socialism and Liberation/X, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, X)
Based on a digital analysis of scores of rapid-response messages following the killing on Saturday, a hub of communist and socialist nonprofit organizations emerged as key organizers of the protests. Many of them are funded by American-born billionaire Neville Roy Singham, a self-declared Marxist-Leninist living in Shanghai. Some are also offshoots of the People’s Forum Inc., a nonprofit hub Singham has funded in New York City since 2017 as an “incubator” for socialist and communist groups. The People’s Forum declined requests for comment.
At 10:48 a.m. ET, BreakThrough News, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and propaganda arm of the People’s Forum, broke the news widely of the killing, sharing a video recorded from inside the Glam Doll Donut shot of the tussle outside, punctuated by gunshots and frantic narration, “Holy s–t. What the f—!…Did they f—ing kill that guy? F—ing kidding me, dude.”
BreakThrough News put a dramatic black-and-white caption over the video: “BREAKING: Another CBP Shooting in Minneapolis.” By Sunday afternoon, the video had 4.1 million views, alongside the outlet’s calls to support the People’s Republic of China, Venezuela’s Maduro and the communist revolution in Cuba.
Before the video cuts off, someone can be heard saying, “Yo, we need people on site!”
MINNESOTA SOCIALISTS TELL WORKERS TO FAKE SICK LEAVE FOR ANTI-ICE PROTESTS
The Party for Socialism and Liberation used Alex Pretti’s image on posters for its anti-ICE efforts. (Party for Socialism and Liberation/X)
At 11:40 a.m., BreakThrough News broadcast a 39-second video showing Minnesota National Guard soldiers charging across a street with batons, some falling as clouds of breath rose in the cold air.
Soon after, at 12:24 p.m., the Party for Socialism and Liberation – a political wing of the movement, working with shared leadership at the People’s Forum – published a quickly-made graphic, “CBP MURDERS ANOTHER IN MINNEAPOLIS,” and the message, “EXPAND THE GENERAL STRIKE!”
The call for a “general strike,” a classic communist tactic, refers to coordinated mass work stoppages aimed at paralyzing civil society to force political – and economic – outcomes.
At 12:33 p.m., the People’s Forum blasted out a bold red-and-white poster to followers, calling for an “EMERGENCY PROTEST” at 4 p.m. ET at Union Square in midtown Manhattan, with the message, “STOP ICE TERROR.”
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA IN NYC TRAINING THOUSANDS OF ACTIVISTS TO COUNTER ICE: REPORT
Democratic Socialists of America, People’s Forum and other groups that identify as Marxist-Leninist activated foot soldiers on social media. (Democratic Socialists of America/X, People’s Forum/X, Defend 512/Instagram)
In lockstep, at 12:57 p.m., Democratic Socialists of America, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, posted a stark black-and-white graphic on X, calling the killing an “execution” and demanding, “ABOLISH ICE NOW.”
At the protest, Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian political operative who has led virulently anti-Israel protests with socialist organizations after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists, rallied the crowd at the 4 p.m. protest, yelling, “We will bring this country to a halt!” The People’s Forum shared the 22-second video clip with the caption: “🚨HAPPENING NOW IN NYC.”
Other groups mobilized simultaneously, including Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a self-described Marxist-Leninist group that has waved its red flag with its acronym, “FRSO,” in the middle of the protests since Good’s killing.
Also active: the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, which has led many of the rapid-response efforts and Black Lives Matter chapters, which led the recent stampede through a local Christian church.
ANTI-ICE AGITATOR ALLEGEDLY BITES OFF FEDERAL OFFICER’S FINGER DURING MINNEAPOLIS ATTACK
By early evening, the narrative had coalesced into a chorus of voices within the far-left propaganda apparatus, adopting charged historical language to brand federal officials as Nazi-like figures. At 4:12 p.m. ET, Calla Walsh, a controversial communist activist filmed this past summer in Iran shouting, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” shared a 32-second video showing barricades built with Republic Services dumpsters.
She wrote, “People of Minneapolis build barricades, trapping ICE Gestapo at the scene of their latest murder in broad daylight. Not far from where they killed Renee Good a couple weeks ago, not far from where George Floyd was killed in 2020.”
By evening, CNN was reporting from the 4 p.m. protest in New York City but did not identify the ideological affiliations of the organizers, even as activists openly carried signs from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, with the group’s full name printed across the bottom.
FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY
Another CNN segment from Minneapolis interviewed Chris Gray, describing him only as Pretti’s “next-door neighbor.” Gray spoke about Pretti while delivering a well-scripted appeal for a general strike to dismantle the “Trump regime” and promote “non-violent resistance.” The segment did not disclose that Gray is a member of Socialist Alternative, the U.S. affiliate of the International Socialist Alternative, a “global fighting organization of workers, young people, and all those oppressed by capitalism and imperialism,” seeking to create a “socialist world.”
Soon after, however, Socialist Alternative shared the interview proudly on Instagram, noting, “Chris Gray, Socialist Alternative member and next-door neighbor of Alex Pretti, speaks out.”
By evening’s end, at 9:44 p.m. ET, Gloria La Riva, a co-founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation who has described herself as “a communist,” posted a message on X, using the inflammatory language now normalized: “Alex Pretti was murdered in cold blood, everyone knows that. 10 shots in his back. All of Trump’s, Noem’s, Bovino’s lies cannot cover it up. The people’s struggle will only grow!”
TRUMP CITES ARMED SUSPECT, LACK OF POLICE SUPPORT FOLLOWING FATAL BORDER PATROL SHOOTING IN MINNEAPOLIS
“Rapid Responders” in Minneapolis track the vehicles they suspect belong to federal officials, including ICE agents, and upload details about their alleged vehicles in a database. (“MN ICE PLATES AIRTABLE DATABASE”)
The maroon Dodge Durango in the early Signal alerts from Saturday morning is Entry No. 2069 in the publicly shared database, “MN ICE PLATES.” It included a gallery of photos of alleged ICE vehicles.
At last count on Sunday, the database had 4,626 records of license plate numbers organized as “Highly Suspected ICE,” “Confirmed ICE,” “Suspected ICE,” “Cleared – Not ICE” and “Unknown.”
The total number of “Confirmed ICE” entries is 2,933 records. The total number of records labeled “Abductors” is 455.
A fine-print disclaimer states that the data is “for informational purposes only” and that its organizers “do not condone its use to forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede or interfere with the official duties of any officer or employee of the United States, or of any agency in any branch of the United States Government, while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties.”
Alleged ICE vehicles outside the shooting were included in a database compiled by Minneapolis citizens who have joined a “Rapid Response” team to track the movements of federal officials. They had swarmed the street minutes before the shooting occurred Saturday morning.
One guide, “Best Practices Guide for Neighborhood or Area Patrol / Monitors: 612,” includes a key to emojis and the jobs they represent for rapid responders:
“🚗💨= Mobile Patrol / Commuter – In a vehicle driving around, looking for agents”
“🚗📍= Stationary Patrol/Monitor – In a vehicle positioned at key places in the area, looking for agents”
“🏃🏻♀️= Foot Patrol – On foot, looking for agents”
“☎️ = Dispatch – Live on the Monitor / Patrol group call”
“📟 = Hyper-local group messenger – Ready to pass on word to individual neighborhoods and blocks”
‘🦺 = School / event safety spotters – Assigned and connected to a specific school or event”
“🍽️ = License plate checker – Ready to check a plate against the list of known license plates’
“⛑️ = Medic – Ready to offer medical care”
“❤️🩹 = Aftercare provider – Available to connect with responders after an event”
The maroon Dodge Durango that was allegedly outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue is listed with three prior sightings: Jan. 11 at 3 p.m. at the Whipple federal detention facility, Jan. 13 at 1:15 p.m. and a final sighting at Powderhorn Park parking lot on 35th Street and 14th Avenue.
It’s listed with the tags, “Seen in a convoy, Tinted/blacked-out windows, ICE agent(s) seen in vehicle,” and a final verdict: “Confirmed ICE.”
As socialist organizations continued to dispatch their foot soldiers to Nicollet Avenue on Sunday evening, the Signal groups were as active as ever on Sunday, an alert going out at 4:37 p.m. ET, with rapid responders now chasing a black Dodge Durango around town.
“2 confirmed ICE vehicles,” the alert read, “…at least 2 agents in each vehicle.”
Politics
Trump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC
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President Donald Trump mocked the Islamic Revolutionary Guard on Sunday morning for staking claim to a Strait of Hormuz “blockade” the U.S. military had already put in place.
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.
“In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’”
Trump declared Saturday’s IRGC fire was “a total violation” of the ceasefire.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” his post began.
“Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations.”
Trump remains hopeful about diplomacy, but is not ruling out a return to force, where he once warned about ending “civilation” in Iran as they know it.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump’s stern warning continued.
“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.
Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.
And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.
By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.
Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.
Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.
The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.
“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.
People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”
“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.
So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.
“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”
Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.
The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.
Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.
“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”
The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.
“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”
Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”
Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.
Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”
A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.
“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.
“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
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