ICE Agent Thought He Could Get Away with This, Reality Says Otherwise

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]The new video released by the city of Minneapolis showing the moments leading up to an ICE involved shooting on January 14th, the night when an ICE agent claimed he was brutally assaulted by three men for three minutes.

[00:00:13]But the video from a street camera appears to show that's not what happened. You can see an ICE agent coming to frame and engage in a brief struggle with what appears to be two men, not three. It's over in roughly 12 seconds, not three minutes. The agent also claimed that he was beaten by a shovel. But if you stop and slow the video down, the video appears to show one of the suspects tossing the shovel before the officer reached the home and wrestled with the men.

[00:00:40]>> Now, you're you're seeing the video there as it is happening. One of the things that had been said in the aftermath of this is that the struggle was about three minutes, but that's not true when you see this happen. The other really critical thing about this video is that it shows that a shovel is dropped before there is a struggle. The shovel's important because in the initial statements from the Department of Homeland Security, they said that these two migrants had attacked the ICE agents with the shovel. But what this video shows is that that was not the case. The shovel was not part of the struggle. There was a shovel present, but it was dropped on the ground.

[00:01:15]>> Just as a reminder, here's what DHS's official narrative was in the immediate aftermath of this incident, as I previously covered months ago.

[00:01:23]>> Our agents were out doing what they're doing every single day across this country as they were doing targeted enforcement going after individuals that are breaking federal law. Uh when this individual uh drove away, crashed his car, tried to run into a home, and as they were wrestling on the ground trying to detain this individual, uh two other men came out of that building and started attacking him with weapons and shovels and brooms. And I as it was three on one, the agent feared for his life and defensively had to take action.

[00:01:51]What we saw was three individuals weaponized shovels and brooms and attack an ICE officer that had to defend himself.

[00:01:58]>> The three illegal immigrants that you're looking at used a beating and ICE ICE officer with a shovel and a broom handle. Now, that happened when that ICE officer tried to arrest one of them in Minneapolis last night. These are their pictures.

[00:02:12]And DHS saying that the officer had to fire a defensive shot to save his life.

[00:02:18]Media leaving out many of these details.

[00:02:20]>> This is Julio Cesar Sosa Celis who is smiling inside of an ambulance we are told last night after being shot in the leg. This is being confirmed through us through multiple DHS and ICE sources that this is indeed the suspect.

[00:02:36]>> Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years. That this administration has used, that the previous administration used. They are doing everything correctly.

[00:02:48]Okay. DHS initially claiming the officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop when a suspect fled the scene, crashed his car, and tried to evade arrest. They further claimed that the suspect violently attacked an officer hitting him with a shovel or broomstick. Now, it appears those claims may be untrue.

[00:03:06]>> Ever since then, what we are learning is again that the two ICE agents made false statements under oath and that this video now shows that the way the struggle was described by these agents was not accurate and therefore the way the Department of Homeland Security described this was not accurate. Now, what we know from an ICE spokesperson in a news statement on Monday is that these agents could face termination. They're currently on administrative leave or criminal prosecution. So, this is still very fluid because it is now a situation where two agents lied under oath.

[00:03:36]>> So, the key facts in this case are that one, in February federal authorities dropped all the charges against the two immigrants, the two Venezuelan men, and opened a criminal investigation into whether the officers lied under oath about what had happened.

[00:03:49]But, what's really disturbing, but not surprising, is that the narrative put out there about these two men initially was that they had attacked and beat an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

[00:04:06]That was before anybody could see evidence and that was not the case whatsoever.

[00:04:12]The video evidence shows that an officer the officers were chasing one of the men to his residence.

[00:04:21]And then another Venezuelan man who lives there was shot during the confrontation.

[00:04:27]And it all led to you know suspension of of these these officers but yeah that that's what happened.

[00:04:33]But it was so nasty that they tried to lie on these people.

[00:04:38]And like yeah there was a scuffle for about 10 seconds but nothing to the length of you know a few minutes.

[00:04:43]And that was what the officer said in their statement when it all all began.

[00:04:47]And it's so nasty that this happens because it's not just DHS and ICE agencies who do this.

[00:04:55]It's police officers right it's police forces and so on so on and so forth. You know why? Because they're relying on the public believing that these officers wouldn't dare lie under oath. They wouldn't dare lie you know when giving their statements because they're supposed to protect and serve the community. So there's this assumption that their word is bond.

[00:05:16]And that's what they're counting on for when they put out statements um whether it's ICE agents or whether it's you know police officers um that yeah whatever they say is true cuz they wouldn't lie. They wouldn't lie to protect themselves. Why? They're they're supposed to protect and serve the community.

[00:05:34]Actually not.

[00:05:35]>> So Selles said he'd retreated into his home and was shot in the leg while in the process of closing and locking his door. On Thursday a federal judge dismissed felony assault charges against the cousins after the US attorney in Minneapolis said newly discovered evidence had contradicted the officers' testimony and after ICE admitted the federal agents lied under oath.

[00:06:02]>> He was on his way home. He's DoorDash delivery person and he was followed by ICE agents. This followed the shooting of Renee Goodby in about a week. So, he was filled with fear. He just wanted to get home. He gets out of his car and he's running in his home when he's tackled by the ICE agent. At that point, there is a struggle. There's no dispute about that. My client slipped out of his sweater and then was in the process of running into his home. Um his cousin comes out, Juan Jose Salas or Julio Jose Salas.

[00:06:36]Um they do not strike the agent. There's no attack with a broom. There's no attack with a shovel. They run and retreat inside the house behind a closed door and that's when they're shot at by the agent. The story came out early on.

[00:06:49]The story was wrong and it's it's heartening to see that the facts prevail. This is one case and it I don't know if it's uh uh message of things to come. We hope so, but in this one case, I'm confident justice has been served so far.

[00:07:05]Why haven't the agents been publicly identified?

[00:07:10]That's a question you'll have to ask ICE officials. The federal government's motivations in keeping the identities of ICE agents, as well as other agents in other cases, hidden from the public, one, is so that they can continue to terrorize other communities or continue to terrorize civilians.

[00:07:26]Two, it's so that nobody will be able to persecute them. Nobody will be able to shame them or quote unquote harass them um when they're walking down the street or they're at a grocery store, right?

[00:07:38]Because nobody knows who they are.

[00:07:42]And so they can continue living their lives without fear of the public knowing all the atrocities that they committed.

[00:07:49]And also also, it's so that they can shuffle shuffle them around or however they see fit. It's like, "Oh, yeah, we're going to we're going to reassign this person. You know, we're going to reassign one of these agents to another department." But you don't know where they're going or you don't know who that is. So they could be showing up somewhere else and it's the same person who was committing crimes and breaking the law, right? A couple couple weeks ago or a couple months ago.

[00:08:15]Um so those are the motivations for why the federal government um is keeping the identities of these ICE agents hidden.

[00:08:23]They don't they don't want them to have that smoke.

[00:08:26]They're they're not ready to face face the smoke.

[00:08:29]But it's shameful it's shameless. And it's cowardly.

[00:08:32]>> Law enforcement operate as avatars of the justice system for whatever country they're assigned to and they exercise the state's monopoly on power. So when you talk about someone being hurt, someone being injured or even killed by law enforcement, those are not innately outside of the realm of possibility when law enforcement is acting, right? Law enforcement officers theoretically could conduct any of those actions and have it be lawful and appropriate. The question is not, "Can they do that?" The question is, "When do they do that? When is it an appropriate step or an action?" And in an ideal training environment, what you want to do is you want to train them to understand that those things should only be done as an act of necessity when it's the choice between the public's safety and the use of force on the individual or when it's necessary to affect an arrest and it's the least coercive form of force possible. The way they're taught at the academy is they're taught practical applications of force, but because there's no legal attachment to that, it's kind of exist in the the ether. They're told, "You can use your baton. You can use your your pepper spray. You can use your firearm, but you should be reasonable doing it without ever actually explaining to them what that meant. I'm really scared.

[00:09:42]I'm really scared about the future of law enforcement and their tactics under Donald Trump's rule and how these potential changes could harm civilians more than help them.

[00:09:51]One of those changes could be AI-powered surveillance tools. Everybody's about AI AI AI. And there are some good elements of artificial intelligence, right? To make things easier.

[00:10:06]In a lot of scenarios, it's hurting the environment.

[00:10:09]And it's also putting us at risk.

[00:10:12]It is putting civilians in harm's way.

[00:10:16]Where you don't you have to always constantly look over your shoulder.

[00:10:20]So again, it's it's not benefiting us.

[00:10:22]Um social media monitoring, okay? Like you could possibly get thrown in jail.

[00:10:27]You could be charged with something just because of what you tweeted or what you retweeted and liked.

[00:10:32]That that's a possibility out there.

[00:10:34]Drones, robots participating operations.

[00:10:37]There's so many things um that could happen under Donald Trump's watch to make our society even scarier for their citizens.

[00:10:48]Um and that doesn't even include, you know, increased legal protections and loopholes for law enforcement offenders.

[00:10:53]Because we see we know how the rules are different for them.

[00:10:57]They don't operate under the same rules.

[00:10:59]So they they have more leeway.

[00:11:01]Right? They can get away with so much more than what the average citizens average citizen can get away with.

[00:11:09]From WHQ, I'm Chris Williamson. We'll see you next time.