Video shows that ICE agents were lying about the shooting of a person in Minneapolis during a Department of Homeland Security operation in that city seeking to crack down on illegal immigration. File Photo by Craig Lassig/EPA
Video evidence released Monday shows the lead-up to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shooting a person in January and further contradicts what an agent said happened in the incident.
Two agents were actually suspected after evidence did not match their stories about a Venezuelan man being shot in Minneapolis after he allegedly fled an attempted traffic stop.
The man, Julia Cesar Sosa-Celis, and another man named Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, were accused at the time of beating an ICE agent who was pursuing Sosa-Celis with a snow shovel and the handle of a broom.
Video released by the Minneapolis officials on Monday shows an ICE agent chasing Aljorna and Sosa-Celis drop the shovel as they approach and Aljorna slips before both run inside of a house, MPR News and The New York Times reported.
The video then shows the ICE agent fire in the direction they went, which resulted in a Sosa-Celis being shot in the thigh.
“Bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying,” Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis, said recently after seeing the video.
Prosecutors, according to The Times, did not see the footage until three weeks after charging the two men — charges that were eventually dropped.
The shooting was one of three that happened in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
The other two shootings, both of U.S. citizens who were not being pursued as part of the crackdown, resulted in two deaths and a significant shift in the manner in which the Department of Homeland Security has enforced the crackdown after a nationwide backlash to it.
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump makes a statement on Iran from the White House Press Briefing Room in Washington on Monday. Trump recounted the rescue of a service member from inside Iran and said that the country could be “taken out in one night.” Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo
