(AFP) – Two federal agents have been put on leave and are under investigation for allegedly lying about a shooting in Minneapolis last month that left a Venezuelan immigrant wounded, a top US immigration official said Friday.
“Video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement. “Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation,” Lyons said. “Lying under oath is a serious federal offense.”
The announcement came one day after federal prosecutors dropped assault charges against Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on January 14. US Attorney Daniel Rosen, in a court filing, said the charges were being dismissed because “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the complaint” made against the two men.
In its initial statement about the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said “an illegal alien from Venezuela” was targeted for a traffic stop and resisted arrest. “While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” DHS said. The officer then “fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” hitting the initial subject in the leg.
The shooting of Sosa-Celis came one week after a federal agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, which had inflamed protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration raids in the Midwestern city. A second killing of a US citizen in late January fueled national backlash against the aggressive and highly politicized Minneapolis crackdown.
Tom Homan, Trump’s immigration enforcement chief, announced on Thursday that the administration was winding down its aggressive immigration operation in Minnesota. Campaigning against illegal immigration helped Trump get elected in 2024, but the killings of two Americans in Minneapolis, videos of masked agents snatching people off the streets, and reports of people being targeted on flimsy evidence, have contributed to a steep drop in his approval ratings.
© 2024 AFP
