DOJ drops charges against men accused of assaulting ICE officers in Minneapolis, citing “inconsistent” evidence

The Justice Department moved to drop federal charges against two men charged with assaulting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis last month, including one Venezuelan defendant who was shot in the leg by an officer, citing “newly discovered evidence” that was “materially inconsistent” with the allegations against them.

The filing, entered Thursday by U.S. Attorney in Minnesota Daniel Rosen, moves to dismiss the charges against the men with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be reintroduced.

In January, the two men, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, were charged in a federal criminal complaint with forcibly assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers in performance of their official duties. The charges came after Sosa-Celis was shot by an ICE officer, which drew nationwide attention amid the federal immigration surge in Minnesota.

It is unclear specifically what new information led to the charges getting dismissed. But the government’s account of the alleged assault was not consistent.

A day after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said Sosa-Celis had fled the scene of a “targeted traffic stop” in Minneapolis in his vehicle, crashed into a parked car and kept fleeing on foot. When an ICE agent caught up to him, two men allegedly attacked the agent with a broom handle and snow shovel, and Sosa-Celis allegedly broke free and also started striking the officer. DHS said an officer then fired a “defensive shot to defend his life.” Sosa-Celis and two other men ran into an apartment but were later taken into custody, DHS said.

But in an affidavit to support charges against the two men, the FBI said that Aljorna — not Sosa-Celis — had fled the scene in a car, and Sosa-Celis was the one who initially struck the ICE officer with a broom stick while he tried to arrest Aljorna. The FBI alleged that Aljorna then broke free and started attacking the ICE officer with the same broomstick. The affidavit also says that the officer “had poor or sporadic lighting” and “had difficulty seeing the assailants.”

And in a cellphone video from the moments after the shooting that was shared online by a state lawmaker, a woman appears to tell a 911 operator that her husband was chased by ICE agents before he reached his home, and was shot in front of his family.

Frederick Goetz, an attorney for Aljorna, told CBS News he’s “delighted” by the decision to dismiss the charges with prejudice. He also commended the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota — which has been hit by a wave of resignations in recent weeks — for “doing the right thing.”

“It is my understanding that the video surveillance evidence that captured the incident was materially inconsistent with the federal agent’s claims of what happened,” Goetz continued, writing that “the agent’s claims of being assaulted were not backed up by the video evidence.”

CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department and an attorney for Sosa-Celis for comment.

The shooting occurred a week after ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good in south Minneapolis, and 10 days before two DHS agents in the city fatally shot Alex Pretti.

In the days after Good and Pretti’s shootings, thousands of protesters demonstrated in the streets in Minnesota, raising tensions in the Twin Cities. 

At one point, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the military into the state, but in the last week, border czar Tom Homan has taken over operations. He announced Thursday the end of the surge of immigration agents in the state, citing a high number of “public safety arrests” during “Operation Metro Surge” and the diminished need for federal officers to respond to “agitators.”