Newly released surveillance footage of Jan. 14 ICE shooting contradicts agent’s account

MINNESOTA—The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis in January told the FBI that by the time he opened fire, he had been “fighting and tussling” with Alfredo Aljorna, another Venezuelan immigrant, “for about three minutes, was exhausted, alone, on the ground, and in fear of his safety.” In the ICE agent’s account, Sosa-Celis, Aljorna and a third man had been repeatedly hitting him with a broom stick and a shovel.

Grainy footage from a city surveillance camera — released by the city of Minneapolis on Monday more than two months after the shooting — show a scuffle between the ICE agent, Sosa-Celis and Aljorna lasting less than 12 seconds.

The ICE agent’s original account, relayed in a sworn Jan. 16 affidavit by an FBI agent, became the basis for the federal charges alleging that Sosa-Celis and Aljorna assaulted the ICE agent.

A month after the shooting, the Department of Justice abruptly dropped those charges and opened an investigation into the “false statements” of the ICE agent and a second ICE agent who was at the scene but not involved in the scuffle. ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said in a statement that video evidence had revealed that the agents appeared to have made untruthful statements, though he did not detail what evidence or what specifically was untruthful about their statements.

The New York Times , which first published the footage Monday, reported that federal prosecutors didn’t watch the footage until three weeks after filing charges against the men, according to an anonymous DOJ official, despite having access to it within hours of the shooting. Instead, the prosecutors relied on the ICE agent’s account and an FBI agent’s written summary of the footage in the Jan. 16 affidavit, which excluded details such as how long the fight lasted.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen alluded to the video footage as “newly discovered evidence,” despite having access to it for months, when moving to drop charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna on Feb. 11, according to the Times.

It’s unclear why prosecutors took so long to review key evidence referenced early on in its own case against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, but the case underscores the federal government’s eroded credibility when it comes to Operation Metro Surge. From then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on down, government officials repeatedly made statements that were later shown to be false with video and other evidence.

The Jan. 14 shooting took place between the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good and the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents, both of which had ample witnesses and bystander footage. The details of the north Minneapolis shooting have been far more shrouded, with no footage of the fight made public until Monday.

The federal government significantly shifted its own narrative: on Jan. 15, a Homeland Security press release incorrectly identified Sosa-Celis as the driver of the car and a subject of a “targeted traffic stop.” The next day, in the Jan. 16 affidavit that accompanied the DOJ’s charges, the government indicated that the ICE agents mistook Aljorna, who was driving the car, for another Latino man wholly uninvolved in the incident, and acknowledged that Sosa-Celis, Aljorna’s roommate, wasn’t involved in the car chase at all.

At the time of the shooting, Noem described the incident as an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement” in which the agent was “fearing for his life.”

The newly released footage offers limited detail, with the incident partly obstructed by a tree and a lamp post. It’s unclear from the footage when the shot was fired; the two men maintained that the agent shot Sosa-Celis through the closed door of their duplex, while the ICE agent claimed to have “simultaneously fired” one round towards the men as they began to run toward the house.

Still, one contradiction between the ICE agent’s account and the footage is explicit: the sequence that the agent described as lasting longer than three minutes appears in the video to last less than 12 seconds (2:56 to 3:07) before Sosa-Celis and Aljorna pull away toward the house.

The footage shows Sosa-Celis standing in the front yard holding what appears to be a snow shovel that he tosses on the ground before the ICE agent arrives at the yard (2:34). The shovel appears to remain on the ground during and after the scuffle, belying the government’s initial claim that the agent was beaten with a shovel. As the two men run toward the house, a separate stick-like object appears to land on the front steps in front of the ICE agent. Aljorna told FBI agents in an interview that he had thrown a broom in the direction of the ICE agent, according to the Jan. 16 affidavit.

The footage does not appear to include the third man that the agent said attacked him. Homeland Security publicized the third man’s name and photo in the aftermath of the shooting, but he was never charged, and no witnesses apart from the immigration agent said he was involved, according to the Jan. 16 affidavit.

Aljorna and Sosa-Celis have maintained that they didn’t attack the ICE agent. Both ICE agents have been placed on leave pending the investigation into their allegedly false statements.

Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were both detained for weeks after the shooting, and then re-detained by ICE after a judge ordered them to be released. Their partners were both detained and transported to Texas in January. They have all since been released from detention and were temporarily barred from deportation during the case against them, the Star Tribune reported.

Now that their charges are dropped, Sosa-Celis’ and Aljorna’s lawyers told the Times that they hope their clients will be eligible for visas for victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement officials — in this case, in the investigation into the ICE agents’ conduct.

Read the federal government’s full Jan. 16 affidavit below, including the ICE agents’ accounts starting on page 4. The two ICE agents have been placed on leave and are being investigating for making false statements.

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