Anti-ICE rally in downtown Lafayette: ‘Seems appropriate – cold and brutal’

Demonstration joins those across the country following killings in Minneapolis. Plus, two local judges appointed to fill vacancies. A Purdue ag department cut under new state law.

Jan 28, 2026

With reporting and photos from Vincent Walter / For Based in Lafayette

A couple of hundred people demonstrated outside the Tippecanoe County Courthouse in feels-like temperatures near zero degrees Tuesday evening, joining those in other communities protesting ongoing operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis and other cities.

“Yeah, it felt like Minnesota out there,” Laura Fells, who came from Brookston for a rally dubbed “Ice Out,” told BiL. “Just brutal. Seems appropriate – cold and brutal, considering what’s going on.”

The demonstration Tuesday night followed a smaller, impromptu one Saturday night, hours after Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse from Minneapolis, was beaten, shot multiple times and killed by ICE agents on the street. (News about that killing included additional reports released Tuesday that continued to run counter to federal administration claims that Pretti was an armed aggressor, instead of a protestor holding a phone before he was taken down by several agents. This is from the Washington Post Tuesday afternoon: “Two federal agents shot Alex Pretti, initial government review reveals. The review makes no mention of Pretti brandishing a weapon, contradicting initial comments from the administration about the killing.”)

Pretti’s shooting death followed another in Minnesota this month, when an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in an encounter on a Minneapolis street.

Rallies have popped up across the country since then.

“It’s all too much,” Fells said. “You have to ask, is Indiana next? It’s got to end.”

Ben Bakker, a Purdue pharmacy student from Valparaiso, was outside the courthouse Tuesday.

“It’s important to spread the word and protest, to show we’re opposed to what’s happening with ICE,” Bakker said.

This was the scene Tuesday evening, in photos from Vincent Walter:

THIS AND THAT …

TWO JUDGES NAMED TO FILL VACANCIES: Gov. Mike Braun on Tuesday filled a pair of vacancies on the bench in Tippecanoe County.

Kevin McDaniel, a Tippecanoe County deputy prosecutor, will fill the final year in a term in Tippecanoe County Superior Court 1. McDaniel will replace Judge Randy Williams, who retired Jan. 17 in the midst of his third term in Superior Court 1, after giving notice in September 2025. Tippecanoe Superior Court 1 covers a range of civil and criminal cases. McDaniel already had filed as a Republican candidate for the seat in the 2026 elections. McDaniel has a bachelor’s degree from Purdue and graduated from Valparaiso School of Law in 2010. He’s been a deputy prosecuting attorney in Tippecanoe and Vanderburgh counties for the past 15 years.
Elliott McKinnis was appointed West Lafayette City Court judge, a position he started on a temporary basis after the March 2025 death Lori Stein Sabol. Stein Sabol had been city judge, dealing with municipal code and parking violations and other city matters, for six terms. McKinnis works full-time for Cook Research and will continue there while handling the part-time work in city court. McKinnis has a bachelor’s degree from Ball State and graduated from the IU McKinney School of Law in 2010. During his career, he also has been a deputy prosecuting attorney for the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor’s Office and the deputy public defender for the Tippecanoe County Public Defender’s Office

DEPARTMENT CUT IN PURDUE AG: Purdue President Mung Chiang and Provost Patrick Wolfe acknowledged Monday that the university’s Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communications would close in June, given a 2025 state law meant to cull programs and degrees deemed to have low enrollment. According to numbers shared at the meeting, Chiang said 11 tenured faculty would be moved to other roles in the College of Agriculture. Chiang said staff members faced reduction in force processes, with chances to be assigned other spots on campus.

“It does not mean that they will no longer have a job at the university,” Chiang told members of the University Senate.

Details about enrollment and how it fell short weren’t shared during the University Senate meeting.

But according to a statement on the department’s page posted early in the spring 2026 semester, the decision was made by the College of Agriculture “due to persistent low enrollments.” The statement said that the undergraduate program for Agricultural Education – “the only agricultural education program offered at a public university in Indiana” – would continue and that “there are no plans to close any other units within the College of Agriculture.”

The statement said current undergrads in the program could continue toward their degrees but that it would no longer be offered to incoming students.

This is the second year since the provision in the current state budget law, inserted in the waning hours of the Indiana General Assembly session, went into play. Seven degree programs at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus in June were listed among 83 systemwide and more than 400 at all of Indiana’s state campuses listed for suspension, elimination or merger. The cuts were billed by the Commission for Higher Education as the first round, “voluntarily submitted” by universities that “elected to proactively identify programs with zero-to-low enrollments and completions” ahead of the budget bill going into effect July 1.

Wolfe told BiL in a recent interview that the law “has almost no impact on how we operate,” because Purdue was already phasing out waning degree programs as a matter of practice.

Asked during a University Senate meeting Monday whether any other degree programs were on the chopping block this year, Wolfe said there weren’t, but that “it’s not to say that there won’t be others in the future.”

FAIRFIELD TOWNSHIP CONTINUES CONTRACT ON LFD TANKER: Fairfield Township will hold off on paying the Lafayette Fire Department for fire protection in the unincorporated portions of the township for a second consecutive year, based on a contract approved Tuesday by the Lafayette board of works.

The agreement will allow the township to continue to set aside and save $100,000 in 2026, which eventually will go toward a new tanker truck for the fire department.

In the agreement, re-upped for a second year Tuesday, the city has a purchase agreement with MacQueen Equipment for a tanker-pumper truck that costs $748,060 and will take 36 to 39 months to deliver. Fairfield Township had $481,000 in its township fire fund to start 2025, according to township records. The 2026 agreement says LFD will expect no money from Fairfield Township in 2026, but that the township would reimburse the city for the cost of the tanker by the end of the year.

Lafayette Fire Chief Brian Alkire said the equipment will help fight fires in areas of Fairfield Township that are outside the city and don’t have access to hydrants.

SESSION ASKS: WHAT’S NEXT ALONG THE RIVERFRONT?: Consultants studying potential features along a section of the Wabash River near downtown Lafayette and Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette are expected to show progress on an update for the Two Cities, One River Master Plan during a presentation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, at the West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St.

The project is looking at an area stretching from the South Street Bridge at the north, the rail corridor along the east side of the Wabash Avenue Neighborhood on the east, the U.S. 231 Bridge on the south and River Road on the west. The project also includes a long section of West Lafayette stretching from either side of Tapawingo Park.

In October, consultants with MKSK asked people to rank options ranging from park shelters to a public beach, water features to public art, lawn spaces to kayak and canoe put-ins. Leaders of Wabash River Enhancement Corp. say similar planning exercises in the past for other parts of the riverfront that led to work getting done now.

Here’s more about the project, via a BiL edition from October 2025: