Two federal agents have been suspended, and criminal charges against a man one of them shot have been dropped, after a prosecutor in Minnesota revealed that the story those agents told about the shooting was not true.
The suspensions and dismissal followed an extraordinary court filing on Thursday, in which Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor, Daniel N. Rosen, asked a judge to dismiss charges against the man who was wounded in that shooting, as well as another man who had been accused of attacking the agent who opened fire.
Mr. Rosen wrote that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations” that federal officials made in a charging document and in courtroom testimony.
By Friday, the case had been dismissed with prejudice, meaning the men cannot be recharged. The two agents had been suspended and were being investigated, Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement.
“Video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” Mr. Lyons said. “Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation.”
Mr. Lyons said the agents, whose names have not been released, could face termination and criminal prosecution.
The shooting on Jan. 14 of Julio C. Sosa-Celis by an ICE agent touched off hours of tense protests in Minneapolis, where thousands of federal agents had been sent as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.
The details of what happened that night are unclear, and the government’s account of the shooting has shifted. Initially, federal officials described Mr. Sosa-Celis and his co-defendant, Alfredo A. Aljorna, as violent agitators who had attacked an agent with a shovel and broom.
The government has said both men are from Venezuela and are in the United States illegally. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused them of trying to kill the agent.
But inconsistencies soon emerged in the government’s description of the episode. Officials changed their account of which of the two men had fled from agents in a car before the shooting. And instead of three people attacking the agent, as the Department of Homeland Security had first claimed, charging documents suggested that there were only two.
Still, prosecutors pushed ahead with felony cases against the men and sought to keep them detained ahead of trial. Mr. Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg, had injuries that were not life-threatening. Mr. Aljorna was not wounded. They were both arrested, officials have said, after agents used tear gas to force them out of a building.
Brian D. Clark, a lawyer for Mr. Sosa-Celis and Mr. Aljorna, said in a statement that his clients were “overjoyed” by Mr. Rosen’s request. “They are so happy justice is being served by the government’s request to dismiss all charges with prejudice,” he said, adding that the identity “of the ICE agent should be made public and he should be charged for his crime.”
A third man was arrested after the shooting and was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of attacking the agent. Charges were never filed against that man, Gabriel Hernandez Ledezma, and court records gave no indication that he was involved in any attack. Still, Mr. Hernandez Ledezma, who is Venezuelan, was detained by immigration officials and sent to Texas.
In a petition seeking release from detention, Mr. Hernandez Ledezma’s lawyer wrote that his client believed he was being held out of state because he was “a key witness that undermines the federal government’s narrative of what occurred.”
The filing on Thursday from Mr. Rosen, whose office has been decimated by resignations since the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota began, was the latest instance of the Department of Homeland Security providing an account of a shooting that later proved questionable or outright wrong.
In Chicago, where a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a woman last year, prosecutors dropped the charges against her after concerns about preservation of evidence were raised. The woman, Marimar Martinez, has since sought to clear her name and has pushed back against the Trump administration’s description of her as a domestic terrorist.
And after two fatal shootings by immigration agents in Minneapolis this year, Mr. Trump and his allies rushed to cast the people who were killed, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, as domestic terrorists. Administration officials persisted in those claims even after some of their accounts were contradicted by videos.
Federal officials announced earlier Thursday that they were ending their enforcement surge in Minnesota after more than two months. More than 4,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested during the campaign, officials said.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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