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NEED TO KNOW
- A German soccer team pulls out of a trip to the U.S. following the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents
- A spokesperson for Werder Bremen said the civil injustices did not align with their values
- Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were both shot and killed in Minneapolis in January by federal agents
German soccer team Werder Bremen will no longer be visiting the U.S. after sharing its disapproval for recent ICE shootings in Minnesota.
In a statement released by a team spokesperson, the organization said it will not continue with a previously planned trip to Minneapolis, stating that civil unrest following the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents, Reuters reported Friday, Feb. 20.
"It is correct that we cancelled a planned trip to Minnesota in the United States. There were sporting, economic and political reasons for this," a Werder Bremen spokesperson told the outlet.
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Werder Bremen was scheduled to play matches in Minnesota and Detroit in May, but will no longer be doing so.
"Playing in a city where there is unrest and people have been shot does not fit with our values. Furthermore, it was unclear to us which players would be able to enter the USA at all due to the stricter entry requirements," the statement continued.
Renee Nicole Good was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on Jan. 7, 2026, just days after ICE launched large-scale raids in Minneapolis.
The 37-year-old mother of three had recently moved to Minneapolis and was returning from dropping her 6-year-old child off at school with her partner just before the deadly encounter.
Roughly two weeks later, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
Pretti was 37 years old and an ICU nurse. The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the shooting occurred because Pretti was "armed" and "violently resisted," though witness footage showed he was holding a phone, not a gun.
Another witness detailed the moments before gunfire erupted, insisting one of the federal agents “shoved” a woman to the ground, and the ICU nurse went to help before they were pepper-sprayed.
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“[Pretti] put his hands above his head and the agent sprayed him again and pushed him. Then [Pretti] tried to help up the woman the ICE agent had shoved to the ground. The ICE agents just kept spraying," the witness claimed.
She later added, “It didn't look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn't see him with a gun.”
On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump said during an interview with Fox News' Will Cain that both shootings were "terrible," but that Good's death made him feel "even worse" because her parents are "Trump fans."
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On Jan. 20, Trump addressed Good's death as he joined White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for her daily briefing, saying that ICE is "gonna make mistakes sometimes."
In an interview with Fox News that same day, Trump said that he would "de-escalate" immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, but clarified that the move was not a "pullback."
"I don't think it's a pullback," he continued. "It's a little bit of a change. We're going to de-escalate a little bit."
Read the original article on People