The family of a man shot in the leg by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday has disputed key elements of the Department of Homeland Security’s version of the incident, saying the shooting happened at the door of the man’s house as he let his housemate inside, rather than out in the street during a scuffle.
The Department of Homeland Security has said an ICE officer shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis as he was assaulting the officer “with a shovel or broom stick.” The agency said the incident began when the officer attempted to stop Sosa-Celis in his car, and that Sosa-Celis tried to flee and then got into an altercation with the officer outside, joined by two housemates.
But Sosa-Celis’s mother, citing an account from her son, said DHS had actually been pursuing one of his housemates, who Sosa-Celis let into their house just before the shooting. Alicia Celis said her son made no mention of anyone running from the house to attack ICE officers.
A Facebook Live video reviewed by The Washington Post includes people at the house telling 911 dispatchers that the shooting happened as the men closed the door at the residence. Another video includes Sosa-Celis mentioning some sort of scuffle before any gunshots were fired, but he does not specify whether that struggle happened at the door or in the street.
Celis, who lives in Venezuela, told The Post that her son called her from the hospital after he was taken into custody by ICE. He told her he had received a panicked call Wednesday evening from Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna, who is one of his housemates and a fellow DoorDash driver, Celis said. Ajorna said he was being pursued by ICE and that he needed Sosa-Celis to let him in the front door of the house, where they and their partners and children and others live.
Sosa-Celis opened the door to let Ajorna inside, Celis said her son told her. Ajorna ran indoors. As Sosa-Celis went to close the door an ICE officer shot him in the leg, his mother said. The men retreated into the house, and people inside called emergency dispatchers, Celis said.
A short time later, ICE officers broke down the front door and went inside the building, Celis said. They arrested Ajorna, Sosa-Celis, and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma, who Celis said was not involved in the incident and was in the basement of the house, where he lives. All three men are undocumented immigrants from Venezuela, according to DHS; Sosa-Celis’s family said his temporary protected status to live legally in the United States lapsed last year. DHS had not announced charges against the men as of Friday afternoon.
In its account of Wednesday night’s shooting, DHS alleged that Sosa-Celis fled in his car during an attempted traffic stop, crashed into a parked car and then ran away. An officer chased him and attempted to arrest him, the agency said, adding that Sosa-Celis resisted and began to “violently assault the officer.” DHS alleged that Sosa-Celis and the officer were struggling when Ajorna and Hernandez-Ledezma came out of a nearby residence and hit the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
DHS also said Sosa-Celis freed himself of the struggle and hit the officer “with a shovel or broom stick,” at which point the officer fired his gun. The agency called the shot “defensive” and said the officer feared for his life. DHS said the men ran into the residence and ICE officers then arrested them.
When asked to provide additional evidence or body-camera footage of the alleged attack and to address the claims presented by Sosa-Celis’s family, DHS referred The Post to remarks Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem made Thursday morning.
“I would say that our agent is beat up,” Noem told reporters. “He’s bruised, he’s injured, he’s getting treatment. And we’re thankful that he made it out alive.”
The agency also did not respond to questions Thursday evening about the medical conditions of the officer and Sosa-Celis.
The shooting of Sosa-Celis — and the angry and sometimes violent protests from residents that followed later — came one week after an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good as she and other residents monitored and protested ICE activity on a residential street.
The federal government over the past week has increased the number of officers in the city to 3,000, a massive deployment, with vows to send more personnel to quell what one administration official called an “insurrection.” Residents have objected to agents detaining people and said they feel like their city is under attack.
Some of the family’s account of Wednesday night’s shooting appeared to align with what was said in a Facebook Live video from inside the home that evening. A chaotic scene appears to unfold as children cry and multiple people speak over each other. The people in the live stream report to 911 dispatchers that one of their family members was shot in the leg as they closed the door of the residence, with ICE officers outside. The Post confirmed the video was filmed from the same address on Minneapolis’s north side.
Sosa-Celis also joined a different Facebook Live video broadcast the same night by a person who Sosa-Celis’s relatives described as a friend of his. That live stream shows Sosa-Celis describing the incident from what appears to be a hospital bed. Speaking Spanish and using a phrase that can be interpreted several ways, he indicates there was some kind of interaction with ICE personnel before the shooting, though it’s unclear whether he’s describing it happening outside the building or as he moved to close the door on the ICE officer.
Sosa-Celis also joined that livestream from his home in the moments after the shooting. He can be heard telling the host of the video that he needs assistance. “We need help, friend. We have ICE here,” said Sosa-Celis, providing his address to viewers. “They shot us, they shot us. They shot us, and hit me in the leg.”
When asked by the host if ICE had been following him, Sosa-Celis, who has his camera pointed toward a window outside, replies that ICE had been following Ajorna.
Neighbors who live behind the house where the shooting happened also confirmed some elements of the family’s version.
Brieella Johnson, 35, said she was home preparing dinner for her children at about 6:30 p.m. — her husband had just left with one of their sons for Bible study — when she heard two men arguing outside the house on North 24th Avenue, which she can see from her back deck.
“We heard two men arguing, then we heard a screech of the vehicle trying to go, and then we heard two to three gunshots,” Johnson said, holding her baby and surrounded by her six older children in her living room on Thursday morning.
She said she saw uniformed ICE officers with guns drawn “swarm” the house. She heard some of the officers shout, “Come out now!” and “Come out now, or we’re going to shoot!” and other things in Spanish.
Johnson said she saw ICE officers shoot at one of the windows of the house, then, “They threw one smoke bomb, then yelled ‘Fire’ … Then afterwards we could see smoke in the second floor window.” One of the building’s front windows appeared to have been shattered, she said.
Johnson heard the DHS account of the shooting and said, “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.” She questioned why the ICE officer ended up grappling and chasing someone he was trying to detain, why he didn’t call for backup sooner and why he fired in a residential area so close to families with children.
“Even if you’re going after someone you know is illegal, have back up,” she said.
Tommy Ross, 72, stood outside his rental house around the block from the shooting location and said he heard three shots late Wednesday and saw the gray Ford sedan mired in the snow and uniformed ICE officers “all around it.”
Ross, who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years, said he recognized the car: He had met the owner, a young man with a Spanish accent, after he struck Ross’s Nissan sedan about a month ago, and they exchanged insurance information. He said he did not recall the man’s name.
Ross and his family heard a car wreck about 7 p.m. “ICE was chasing them people. They ran into the house. There was a fight inside the house,” said Tommy Ross Jr., 40, who was visiting his father at the time of the shooting.
He said he heard a woman shout: “Get out of my house!,” then heard ICE officers shout, “Freeze!” and “Get on the floor!”
Following ICE officers’ detention of the three men Wednesday night, tensions flared as neighbors and protesters arrived at the scene. Some protesters heckled, filmed with cellphones and threw fireworks and a water bottle at officers. Officers fired tear gas and flash bangs at the crowd. Conservative influencer Nick Sortor posted video footage on social media that showed protesters attacking empty ICE vehicles. On Thursday, a damaged ICE laptop and a torn FBI property receipt could be seen on the street.
“They were combative all night,” the younger Ross said. “They were shooting tear gas, it was all in the air, you couldn’t stand outside without coughing.” The activity was still going on when he headed to bed at 2:30 a.m., he said. “I went to sleep to ‘boom, boom, boom.’ Sounded like a war zone.”
Local and state officials have called on ICE to leave Minnesota, while the Trump administration has condemned residents who are tracking, protesting and trying to disrupt ICE activity.
On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, raising the possibility of taking the highly unusual step of sending U.S. troops into a domestic city. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, urged the federal government not to escalate the tension.
“They’re trying to make a riot out of it,” the elder Ross said of Trump administration officials, choking up as he spoke. “Governor Walz is doing a good thing, trying to keep them together.”
Trump on Friday addressed his comments on the Insurrection Act, telling reporters outside the White House: “If I needed it, I’d use it. I don’t think I need it right now.”
Johnson, the neighbor, said she does not support Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. “I don’t think they need U.S. troops or the National Guard. They need a safe and secure plan,” she said of ICE officers. “If the federal government is going to continue to use ICE, they need to treat these people like humans … You can’t just go in guns blazing. You disrupt communities. You make people scared.”
But her husband Bryant Johnson, 35, who runs a painting business, blamed local and state officials for not preventing or doing more to address welfare fraud claims that intensified Trump’s attention on Minnesota. Like Trump, he blamed the fraud on Minneapolis’s large Somali community, because many of the dozens of people implicated in the scandal are Somali American. Most Somalis in the Twin Cities, a population of more than 83,000, are U.S. citizens.
“I feel like a lot of this was brought on by our mayor and our government officials that were very well aware of the fraud,” Bryant Johnson said. “And if they didn’t let that kind of stuff continue and go on, we might not have this much of a presence of ICE.”
“When you come here from another country to defraud our country of hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added, “you’ve got to go.”
His wife shook her head. “There has to be a different way of getting them out,” she said. “There’s plenty of Americans that committed fraud. They go to jails, they don’t get killed.”
Sosa-Celis’s father-in-law, who lives in Saint Paul and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is undocumented, described Sosa-Celis as a hardworking man who provides for his family in the United States and Venezuela.
Sosa-Celis’s mother said Thursday evening that she had not heard from her son since Wednesday night and does not know where he is or the status of his injury.
“I haven’t been able to sleep,” she said. “He never has a ‘no’ for me … He says, ‘Here, Mom. Take as much as you want.’”
Hennessy-Fiske reported from Minneapolis.
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