WATCH: Emotional West Hartford Mayor's Remarks On ICE Killings

WEST HARTFORD, CT — West Hartford's top elected official opened a busy town council meeting this week with a scathing rebuke of the events in Minnesota in recent weeks.

While Minneapolis, Minn., continues its battle against President Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor delivered emotional remarks at the start of Tuesday's West Hartford Town Council meeting.

Specifically, she addressed the shooting and killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 24 by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

That came several days after ICE agents shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Good while authorities were on detail in the city rounding up immigrants.

ICE's recent incursion into Minnesota has proven wildly unpopular nationwide, as video footage of both killings at the hands of federal agents has shocked many.

Tuesday, Cantor ripped the happenings in Minnesota, reading a statement just after council members recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

"This is a moment that demands speaking to the incredible importance of that moment," Cantor said regarding Pretti's death. "This is a moment that demands moral clarity."

Cantor said what is happening in Minnesota is "profoundly disturbing," alluding to both Good and Pretti's deaths at the hands of ICE.

Both were American citizens, and both were opponents to ICE's operations that saw agents rounding up immigrants and taking them away. Both were shot and killed by ICE.

"That fact alone should alarm every one of us," Cantor said.

Cantor cited Pretti's service as an intensive care nurse for veterans and his service to his community.

"He was not an enemy of the state. Yet he is dead," Cantor said angrily. "He was killed in broad daylight during a federal operation while appearing to assist another demonstrator ."

She said the incidents raise "serious questions" about the use of deadly force by agents.

More alarming, Cantor said, were federal officials' quick use of the word "terrorist" when describing Pretti shortly after his death.

Trump, Stephen Miller, a Trump advisor, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem all used the term "domestic terrorist" shortly after Pretti's killing, claiming Pretti had a gun and was about to "assassinate" ICE agents.

While Pretti had a legal firearm, footage showed he was holding a phone, filming the actions of ICE agents against a woman they had pushed to the ground in Minneapolis.

"That narrative is already unraveling. To take a life, then smear the person who was killed, is not justice. It is propaganda," Cantor said.

She then spoke of Good's death. Good, 37, was shot three times, including in the face at point-blank range, while driving away from ICE officers on Jan. 7. She later died.

Cantor blasted the federal response to Good's killing and the events leading up to Pretti's death.

"The response to that killing was not to pause, regroup, retrain, or investigate, but to surge more agents into the city and escalate force," Cantor said. "That matters. Because what followed was not a mistake or misunderstanding. It was a choice.

Cantor blamed Pretti's death on the actions of federal leadership.

She spoke of Minneapolis healing from the 2020 George Floyd murder fallout (Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis cop), saying it took years for thecity to regain trust.

"What we are now seeing replaces trust with fear, safety with escalation, and community policing with militarized force," Cantor said.

Cantor expressed alarm at federal authorities providing a narrative that is the direct opposite of what people can "plainly see."

"George Orwell warned of this exact moment," Cantor said. "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

"That is the language of totalitarianism, and we are sliding faster toward it than many may want to admit."

Cantor also mentioned the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters mobbed the Capital to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results and Joe Biden's election.

After a day of violence, arrests, convictions, and sentences, Trump pardoned all of the rioters convicted of crimes after re-taking the White House in 2024.

"This is not and should not be about partisan politics," continued Cantor. "It is about whether all Constitutional rights apply to everyone or only when convenient."

She said Americans' "own government" has become "the greatest threat to the principles it is sworn to uphold."