While Dave Matthews was in Riviera Maya, MX this weekend for his annual destination event with Tim Reynolds, his mind was often back home in the States as the multi-day event went on. Following a tribute to American music legend Bob Weir on Thursday, Matthews’ thoughts on Friday drifted toward the Donald Trump administration’s increasingly violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

In a lengthy video he posted on his birthday earlier this month, the South African-native Matthews had spoken about the ongoing situation in Minnesota, where federal agents had killed Renée Good two days prior.

“I think about how lucky I’ve been in my life, here in this land,” he said in the clip. “And so, then I think about the way I repay it, and the way I repay it is with taxes. They can raise my taxes, as far as I’m concerned. But—big ‘but,’ big, juicy ‘but’—that’s if they spend my taxes on bridges and the national parks and maintaining the highways, the libraries, raising the minimum wage, paying nurses, free university for people who can’t afford it, free healthcare, things that are reasonable. School lunches for god’s sakes.”

He went on, “I don’t want my taxes to pay for I.C.E., to masked thugs to roam our streets and terrorize our communities and rip families apart. We should be taking care of each other. We should be minding each other. We should be housing the homeless. We shouldn’t be, you know, throwing people to the ground. Which brings me to Renee Nicole Good. Murdered in front of her fellow citizens in Minneapolis, murdered in the streets. And no matter what narrative this administration is trying to sell us, we can see the videos. This administration, these people who are trying to tell us not to believe what we see… it is so horrific.” Watch the full video below.

Dave Matthews on I.C.E., Renée Good, Community – 1/9/26

Those feelings surely lingered for Dave Matthews on Friday in Mexico when he performed a take on “Ohio”, the song Neil Young wrote in response to the killing of four American students by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in 1970, and added a refrain from Rage Against The Machine‘s anti-police brutality protest track “Killing in the Name” (“f— you, I won’t do what you tell me”) in an emotionally charged passage late in his set.

The subtext of that performance was magnified exponentially back at home in the States, where many fans spent the day on Saturday digesting the news that federal immigration enforcement agents had killed yet another U.S. citizen in the streets of Minneapolis before learning about Matthews’ “Ohio”/”Killing in the Name” the night prior.

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Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was killed by federal agents on Saturday in Minneapolis. Multiple verified video sources show that he approached federal agents with a phone in his hand and attempted to shield a woman from being pepper-sprayed by them before he was taken to the ground by seven agents and shot at least 10 times at close range. Pretti was carrying a legally registered firearm, which is permitted by Minnesota law, though video shows that he never attempted to draw it and that the agents had already removed it from its holster on Pretti’s waist before they opened fire. Read the New York Times‘ detailed video analysis of the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement agents here.

In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing, prior to an investigation into the matter and before many of the now-available video angles had surfaced, U.S. Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino told reporters at a press conference that officers had followed their training when faced with an armed suspect who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

As was the case with Renée Good, officials across the Trump administration quickly sought to demonize Pretti as a violent agitator and frame federal immigration enforcement agents as infallible, even as extensive video footage and witness accounts clearly contradict those claims.

We urge you not to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. Be safe out there.

Watch Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds perform Neil Young’s “Ohio” with added lyrics from Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” in Mexico below.