ICE tear‑gassed a 69‑year-old Minneapolis bookseller, then his furious clapback went viral, and now his book sales are exploding too

As pressure mounts on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minneapolis, hometown folk heroes are already being etched into the city’s future history books. The latest is Greg Ketter, a 69-year-old bookstore owner who, after hearing that Alex Pretti had been killed, got into his car and drove straight to the scene — where, amid clouds of tear gas, he told ICE exactly what he thought.

If the 700 percent spike in Ketter’s book sales is any indication, he may have been speaking for millions across the country. In the now-viral video, you can hear the smoke filling his lungs, cracking his voice as he yells, “Stop. Stop.” Wearing a red plaid jacket, black beanie, and scarf, Ketter looks around in disbelief before shouting to the camera, “They just killed him.” He then adds, “I’m 70 years old and I’m f******* angry!”

Ketter didn’t know Pretti personally. But when he heard that another person had been shot in the city, he left his home in Andover and drove to Nicollet Avenue. He had already been attending anti-ICE demonstrations around Minneapolis and never imagined that an impassioned outburst would make him go viral.

But protest, it turns out, is nothing new for Ketter. In 2020, during the height of the George Floyd protests, he feared demonstrators might burn down his DreamHaven Bookstore & Comics on 38th Street after a neighboring shop was destroyed. In response, Ketter and a group of friends and family members slept outside the store to ensure it wasn’t set ablaze. That story, too, made national news.

Ketter has been running the bookstore since 1977, and over the decades, he says he has witnessed all manner of unrest and political conflict. Still, nothing has angered him as much as what he believes ICE agents are doing in the Twin Cities. He told USA Today that he drove to the site of the shooting hoping to see the agents’ faces, only to find them masked and firing tear gas, which he said felt like an attempt to “instigate” the situation.

These days, when something goes viral online, it often reveals what the public actually feels. Too often, news stories lack a human face or a clear voice, reduced instead to the administration’s claims — with any opposing reporting dismissed as “fake news.” Ketter said that in the immediate aftermath, his bookstore received a few hostile phone calls. “One guy called, asked to speak to the Communists here, asked if there were any Communists here,” Ketter recalled. “And I said, ‘Yeah, all of us,’ and he hung up.”

Still, after nearly 50 years of running the store, DreamHaven remains a beloved fixture for locals and visiting celebrities alike. Once figures like Patton Oswalt shared Ketter’s story online, book orders surged. Where the store typically handled about 10 orders a week, Ketter suddenly found himself processing roughly 300 orders in just a couple of days — until the website eventually crashed.

It may seem menial, but the message was clear: the people have spoken.