Minneapolis — Two versions have emerged of Wednesday night’s shooting in north Minneapolis in which a Venezuelan migrant was shot in the leg by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while allegedly trying to flee. The migrant and two others were arrested.
Cell phone footage shared on social media by Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade appears to show the moments after Wednesday’s shooting took place, in which a woman calls 911 and can be heard pleading for help.
The caller says her husband was chased by ICE agents before he reached his home, and was shot in front of his family.
But according to the Department of Homeland Security, the man who was shot, identified by the DHS as Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, fled from federal officers, crashed into a parked car and then resisted arrest.
According to DHS, two other men then came out of a nearby apartment and allegedly attacked one of the officers with a snow shovel and broom handle. Fearing for his life, DHS says, the ICE officer fired a defensive shot, hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg.
The ICE officer was injured during the incident, DHS said, and both the officer and Sosa-Celis remained hospitalized Thursday.
It marks the second Minneapolis shooting in a week involving an ICE officer. The fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer in a residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7 has become a flashpoint in the ongoing unrest in the Twin Cities.
Tensions flare in Minneapolis after latest shooting
Wednesday’s shooting has ignited some of the fiercest clashes since the federal government deployed nearly 3,000 ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents to the Twin Cities over the last few weeks.
During one protest Thursday, federal agents deployed chemical agents on a crowd without warning.
One video appeared to show vandals breaking into a federal official’s car, carting off a crate, and then spray painting it.
The FBI on Thursday released a flyer offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of stolen government property from the vandalized vehicle.
Amid the protests, and that spasm of vandalism, President Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Mr. Trump said.
In a social media post, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called on Mr. Trump “to turn the temperature down.”
He also called on protesters to demonstrate “peacefully.”
“We cannot fan the flames of chaos,” Walz said. “That’s what he wants.”
