Two men charged with assaulting agents in ICE shooting released by a judge, re-detained by ICE

ST. PAUL, Minn. (Minnesota Reformer) — Two Venezuelan men who were charged with assaulting a federal immigration agent were re-detained after a judge ordered them to be released on Tuesday.

On Jan. 14, the two men allegedly assaulted an ICE officer when one was being detained by ICE; the officer then shot one of the men in the leg when he sought to escape inside his home in north Minneapolis.

Alfredo Aljorna, 26, and Julio Sosa-Celis, 24, were released from federal custody after U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson concluded that they do not present a heightened flight risk. Magnuson also ordered that they cannot be deported from the country before the ongoing case ends.

Before leaving the courthouse, they were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Star Tribune reported.

Patrick Schiltz, chief judge of the federal district court in Minnesota, quickly ruled that ICE cannot remove Aljorna and Sosa-Celis out of the state, and gave the federal government until Friday to explain the detention. Schiltz, a former Supreme Court clerk to conservative icon Antonin Scalia, has previously ripped the Trump administration for ignoring dozens of court orders and demanded to see ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons for a contempt proceeding.

Aljorna and Sosa-Celis have since been brought back to Sherburne County jail, the same place the federal government had been holding them, said attorney Brian Clark, who filed the habeas petition after the men were re-detained. They were detained before they had the chance to speak to their defense attorneys, Clark said.

The incident began when ICE agents initiated a car chase with Aljorna, mistaking him for someone else. The federal government has alleged that Sosa-Celis and Aljorna attacked the ICE agent with a broom and a snow shovel, though both men deny that happened. The shooting happened on the 600 block of 24th Avenue North in north Minneapolis, at a duplex where the two men lived with their partners.

Both men work as DoorDash food delivery drivers and have one-year-old sons in Minneapolis, according to court documents. Both entered the country illegally from Venezuela, according to Homeland Security, but have had no failures to appear for court proceedings, according to court documents filed by their lawyers.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security statement described the men as criminals, though the only listed offenses were for Sosa-Celis driving without a license and giving a false name to a law enforcement officer. Court documents filed by the men’s attorneys say that neither have criminal convictions, consistent with a search in Minnesota court records for their names.

The shooting came a week after the killing of Renee Good by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross and 10 days before Alex Pretti was killed by immigration agents.

Over 100 protesters showed up to the scene after the news of the shooting quickly spread. Federal agents deployed tear gas and flash bangs, while some protesters shot fireworks at law enforcement. At least two people were detained by federal agents after someone threw fireworks at the agents; at least two vehicles believed to be used by federal officers were vandalized. At least six people have been arrested and charged for stealing from and vandalizing the federal vehicles, the Star Tribune reported.

Facts surrounding “defensive shot” continue to be disputed

In a sworn affidavit unsealed on Jan. 20, FBI agent Timothy Schanz described a sequence of events: Two federal immigration enforcement agents identified a car belonging to Joffre Barrera, an undocumented immigrant. They tried to pull over the car, after which the driver of the car — who turned out to be Aljorna, not Barrera — sped away.

At the end of the car chase, Aljorna hit a light pole, got out of the car and ran toward his apartment. One of the immigration agents caught up to Aljorna, who had slipped, and grabbed him, after which they began to tussle.

Three weeks after the shooting, the facts of what happened next are still disputed between the two men’s accounts and the account of the immigration agent who fired the shot.

According to the affidavit, Sosa-Celis told the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that he had a snow shovel but never used it; that he saw Aljorna with a broom, though it was unclear whether Aljorna was using it to strike the ICE agent; and that he pulled Aljorna away from the officer, into the house, before locking the door behind them.

Sosa-Celis said he was then shot in the leg through the closed door.

Aljorna told the FBI that he had slipped out of his jacket and ran toward the duplex, according to the affidavit. Before he entered the house, he said he grabbed a broom by the door and threw it in the direction of the agent. Aljorna also said that Sosa-Celis was shot through the door.

Frederick Goetz, Aljorna’s attorney, told the Reformer that both men still maintain that they never attacked the ICE agent, and that Sosa-Celis was shot when he was around 10 feet behind the closed front door.

In a conflicting account in the affidavit, the ICE agent said that during the tussle, Sosa-Celis, Aljorna and a third man hit him repeatedly with a broom and a snow shovel. Schanz said that he reviewed a photo of a “bloody gash” on the agent’s hand consistent with his account of shielding himself from the broom.

The ICE agent said that he then drew his pistol; the men dropped the broom and the shovel and began to run toward the house; and the agent “simultaneously fired” one round towards the men, according to the affidavit.

The FBI reviewed surveillance tape from the Minneapolis Police Department that showed three individuals in a “physical altercation” near the duplex, with one person first seen in the yard with a shovel, the affidavit said. The video, which has not been released to the public, depicts a person laying on the ground with two people running toward the house, according to the affidavit.

In Facebook livestream video of a 911 call made from inside the house moments after Sosa-Celis is shot, a woman told the operator in Spanish that her husband “got to the house and as we closed the door on them, they shot him.”

Another woman added: “Tell them that they shot the door.”

The call in the video matches a 911 call log obtained from the city of Minneapolis by the Reformer.

Schanz’s affidavit said that law enforcement on the scene were unable to find any bullet holes in the house, though at a hearing on Tuesday, Goetz showed photographs depicting a bullet hole through the front door of the duplex and in an interior wall, the Star Tribune reported, possibly poking holes in the government’s account that the agent had fired a “defensive shot.”

Goetz told the Star Tribune that he recently learned that the officer who shot Sosa-Celis is under investigation for unreasonable use of force.

The federal Homeland Security narrative in the aftermath of the shooting incorrectly identified Sosa-Celis as the driver of the car and a subject of a “targeted traffic stop,” though the FBI affidavit indicates the officers mistook Aljorna for Barrera. At the time, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement.”

ICE detained a third man at the scene, and Homeland Security publicized his name and photo, though he was never charged. In an FBI interview, the third man said he never went outside, and no witnesses apart from the immigration agent said he was involved, according to Schanz’s affidavit.

Both Aljorna and Sosa-Celis’ partners, 19-year-old women, were detained and transported to Texas in January; Sosa-Celis’ girlfriend returned to Minnesota last week, the Star Tribune reported.