In a post that included a stylized graphic of a presumed federal officer holding a gun to someone’s head, Illini Republicans stated that they “stand with ICE” amid the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
The RSO referred to Pretti and Good, two United States citizens who were both killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the past month, as “traitors.”
As of Sunday, the group removed the graphic but kept the larger post, which garnered more than a thousand comments on their Instagram account.
The post continues to state that “it is, has, and always will be the mandate of our brave public servants, domestic and abroad, to fell the enemies of the United States of America.”
In a written response to questions from The Daily Illini, Illini Republicans declined to comment on whether they were saying Good and Pretti deserved to be killed.
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“The extremity simply mirrors how much we stand with ICE,” the group wrote in response to a question about why they would post something so extreme. “We support ICE in its mission to deport people who are not legally supposed to be in the country.”
Earlier in the post, the RSO wrote that for “the past 60 years, and especially in the last decade, our nation has come under invasion from the masses of the third world and those incompatible with Western civilization.”
In regard to a question about whether the stylized graphic of an officer holding a gun to someone’s head glorifies or valorizes the killings, the RSO wrote that “the image is, in fact, not intended to target nor incentivize violence against a particular party.”
They added that “There is no labeling in the graphic, and there are no identifying features. In short, people are going to take away whatever they want, but reasonably this graphic does not glorify nor valorize any incident because it lacks any reasonable connection.”
The group stated it does not “endorse violence nor discrimination towards anyone based on their identification with a specific protected group,” and that the groups message is that it supports “the enforcement of the law and those who enforce it.”
Administration officials have said both Pretti and Good were seeking to hurt ICE officers. Independent investigations and video analysis have contradicted such claims. In the case of Alex Pretti, Trump administration officials have distanced themselves from claims made by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Pretti, an Illinois native, was an “assassin.”
