DOJ investigating whether ICE officers lied about migrant’s shooting

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers lied under oath about the shooting of a migrant in Minneapolis last month, an ICE spokesperson said Friday.

The about-face on the casewhich Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem initially called an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” marks the latest instance in which immigration authorities have had to walk back such claims in the face of evidence contradicting them.

In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 14 shooting of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, immigration enforcement officials described him as a “violent criminal illegal alien” who was part of a group that attacked an officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle during an attempted arrest. The officer shot Sosa-Celis in the leg in self-defense, authorities said, apparently basing that account on reports from the officers at the scene.

The government charged Sosa-Celis and another man with forcibly assaulting an ICE officer.

But on Thursday, prosecutors moved to dismiss the case against both men. And on Friday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told MS NOW that a joint review of video evidence by ICE and the Justice Department “has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers” appears to include “untruthful statements” regarding the shooting.

“Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation,” McLaughlin said, noting that federal prosecutors had begun reviewing the officers’ statements.

MS NOW’s review of the government’s initial narrative of the events of the day indicate that certain claims were unsupported by evidence or contradicted in court.

DHS initially said in a news release that an agent fired a defensive shot at Sosa-Celis — who the government alleged was trying to resist arrest following a traffic stop — and two others who began assaulting the officer.

“What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” Noem said the following day.

But an FBI agent whose affidavit accompanied the charges said the government said that Sosa-Celis was not in the fleeing car but instead standing on the front porch of a residence that one of the men fled to in his car; Sosa-Celis was urging the man to “run faster” to escape the officers; and that Sosa-Celis then hit one of the officers with a broom handle, the affidavit states.

The same ICE officer alleged a “third Hispanic male” also hit him with a shovel — but the FBI affidavit later states that another Hispanic male who lived in the building “denied ever going outside and no other subjects or witnesses identified that he was involved in the incident.”

When the officer drew his pistol, the men fled to the nearby residence, according to the affidavit. Federal officers eventually entered the residence with tear gas and took the men into custody.

Sosa-Celis denied the government’s allegations in court last month, including the claim that he struck the ICE officer. A filing from Sosa-Celis’ lawyer states that neither multiple witnesses nor surveillance footage supported the officer’s claim that he was struck by a broom or shovel or that Sosa-Celis had any physical contact with him at all.

According to that filing, Sosa-Celis “came to this country illegally to escape the violence and insecurity he faced in Venezuela” and was subsequently granted Temporary Protected Status. He has a young son and most recently worked for DoorDash, according to the filing, which also notes that he has no prior convictions for violent offenses.

That motion to dismiss the case filed Thursday states that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations” in the original affidavit. The judge granted that motion Friday.

The shooting of Sosa-Celis, which happened after nightfall with fewer bystanders, did not attract the same outcry as the daytime killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers in Minnesota, which were recorded on multiple cell phones.

But it was still often cited as part of widespread criticism of the Trump administration’s surge of several thousand immigration officers into the state, which border czar Tom Homan announced this week would fully wind down within days.

The Department of Justice is also conducting a civil rights probe into the shooting of Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse killed by Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. That announcement marked a reversal of the DOJ’s earlier decision that there would be no civil rights investigation and that Homeland Security would investigate its own officers instead, as MS NOW previously reported.

As MS NOW reported this week, a lawyer for Marimar Martinez, the woman shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago in October, alleged that the agent, Charles Exum, is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Indiana for his involvement in the shooting.

Lawyers for the government — which unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Martinez for assaulting an officer — stated in court that there was a “separate but related ongoing criminal investigation” that they argued should prevent the release of additional evidence, but never specified the focus of that investigation. Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, said an assistant U.S. attorney in Indiana confirmed to him that Exum was the subject of that investigation. And the evidence the government’s lawyers was trying to block was released this week following a judge’s ruling last Friday.

Sydney Reynolds contributed to this report.