New Video Busts ICE Lie About Immigrant Beating Agent With a Shovel

The agents claimed he “recklessly zigzagged through traffic,” while Aljorna claimed the agents were purposefully trying to ram his car. When he arrived home, his roommate and fellow Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was standing outside shoveling snow. When Sosa-Celis dropped the shovel and turned around to run inside he was shot in the leg by the ICE agents. The bullet that hit Sosa-Celis ended up stuck in the house near a children’s playset.ICE’s version of events? That Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were assaulting them with a broom and a shovel for nearly three minutes, justifying their use of force. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even called it an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” and the men were charged with assault. Now it’s abundantly clear that was a complete lie.New footage of the incident captured by a city camera at a nearby intersection shows Sosa-Celis throwing the shovel aside as he flees, directly contradicting the agents’ exaggerated claims. Instead of three minutes, like ICE claimed, the confrontation lasted about 12 seconds. And yet both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were jailed for weeks after. “There is a snow shovel there, but it doesn’t appear it ever gets used as a weapon,” Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said after reviewing the video. “There is no bludgeoning or anything.... It sounds like an unarmed person got shot running away.”It’s hard to describe just how despicable this is. Two men were virtually randomly accosted by ICE agents. They shot one in the leg. Then the federal government called them murderers and hit them with heavy charges, all for video footage to invalidate it all.