Retired Maryland immigration Judge David Koelsch was in Minneapolis visiting family when he heard the news that federal agents there had shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti.

Koelsch drove to the scene, feeling “sickened and horrified,” he said, by the news of another killing at the hands of federal agents. He wanted to bear witness to the loss of life and stand with Minnesotans.

For Koelsch, 59, this family visit was unlike any other. He saw the vibrant business district he’d visited as a kid while spending summers with his grandparents transformed into an unrecognizable militarized zone occupied by masked, armed men.

And he experienced firsthand the “unhinged” actions of Border Patrol agents. He was tear-gassed, then witnessed federal agents dogpile an older man, arrest him and march him down the street.

Koelsch’s career has spanned every corner of the country’s complex immigration issue. He represented noncitizens as an attorney. He taught law students how to defend them. And, for about seven years, he decided cases as a federal judge in Hyattsville Immigration Court.

Retired since September 2025, he works for World Relief, a faith-based nonprofit headquartered in Baltimore that helps refugees resettle around the globe.

As a judge, Koelsch, who said he doesn’t align with either political party, had the power to determine whether an immigrant would be deported. He was appointed to his judicial position by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the first Trump administration.

Koelsch said what he’s seeing now under President Donald Trump “is not a humane way of carrying out immigration enforcement.”

In recent weeks, the killings of two Minnesotans shot by federal agents have sparked outrage from residents and lawmakers. Members of Congress are planning to reject the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget, and Democrats have called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment.

On Friday, a day before the latest ICE shooting, Minneapolis residents took to the streets to protest the ICE surge. Koelsch described the mood as “high spirited” and hopeful but also one filled with “gentle anger” and “quiet resolve.”

“It was just really a very positive demonstration of support for immigrants and against some of the really bare-knuckled immigration tactics here in Minneapolis,” he said.

That mood shifted Saturday as news of the fatal shooting spread.

“I decided to go down there not to cause any trouble, not to get in the way, but just to bear witness,” he said. “Just to be there, to grieve for this life that was taken and to just say that this is not all right.”

He parked a few blocks away from Nicollet Avenue, the street on which Pretti was fatally shot and a busy part of town that Koelsch frequents on his visits to Minneapolis.

As he neared the place where Pretti was shot, he could see the flashing lights of law enforcement vehicles. He heard loud bangs — a block or so away, he estimated. The green-tinted fog of tear gas washed over him. His eyes started to tear up. He couldn’t breathe.

“My chest started getting tight,” he said. “I felt like throwing up.”

He dropped back and joined onlookers at a corner.

For months he had seen the images on TV, but he said seeing up close the band of masked men in military fatigues, heavily armed with rifles and pistols, was “pretty jarring.”

While with the group at the corner, he saw a man about his age slip on a patch of ice and fall into a Border Patrol agent standing in front of him, Koelsch said.

People tried to help the man up, but it was too late.

“Three other Border Patrol agents basically jumped this guy and threw him on the ground,” he said. “They were all over him.”

The man’s hands were zip-tied before agents escorted him away, he said, “to wherever they were going to take him.”