Illinois State Senate President Don Harmon condemned a recent social media post shared by a conservative student group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign calling Alex Pretti and Renee Good “traitors” that featured violent imagery.
UIUC student political group Illini Republicans shared a post last week in support of the Department of Homeland Security agency’s mass deportation operations featuring a graphic illustration depicting a masked federal agent holding a gun to the head of a kneeling man alongside the caption “Only traitors help invaders.”
The group has since removed the graphic from the post, which reads in part “traitors such as Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good had voided their liberties the moment they decided they were above the law and the popular opinion.”
The post received strong backlash from students online who said the post glorified Pretti and Good’s recent killings. It is now the subject of an investigation by the University’s Title VI Office, which handles civil rights complaints, according to The Daily Illini, U of I’s student newspaper.
Oak Park’s Harmon joined the calls for the club to be sanctioned by the university earlier this week.
“The imagery and message posted by college Republicans at the University of Illinois is vile and bigoted,” Harmon said in a statement. “It glorifies violence, dehumanizes immigrants and echoes some of the darkest moments in our history. It has no place in our society.
“All students — especially immigrant and international students — deserve to feel safe and respected. I support the university’s immediate review, and I urge campus leadership to treat this incident with the seriousness it warrants. Free expression is not a shield for hate. Illinois will always stand for dignity and reject bigotry and the toxic politics of dehumanization.”
The graphic included in the original post appears to be based directly off a still image from bystander video of Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis on Jan. 23, according to a review done by The Daily Illini.
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February 5, 2026 at 02:57PM
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