Video undermines ICE account of officer shooting a man in Minneapolis

Video undermines ICE account of officer shooting a man in Minneapolis City released video of January shooting after charges against two Venezuelan men involved were dropped The city of Minneapolis released a video Monday that undermined the initial Immigration and Customs Enforcement account of a shooting involving an agency officer and two Venezuelan men in January. The video, from a city-owned security camera, captured federal officers chasing one of the men to his residence. Another Venezuelan man who lives there was shot during the confrontation, which eventually led to the suspensions of two federal officers involved in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the so-called Operation Metro Surge. Meanwhile, federal authorities in February dropped all charges against the two immigrants and opened a criminal investigation into whether the officers lied under oath about what had happened. The city released the video after the New York Times , which obtained a copy earlier, reported that the footage raised questions about why it took weeks for the federal government’s case against the two men, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, to collapse. Among other things, though the ICE officer at the center of the case claimed at first that he tussled with both men for about three minutes before firing, the video released Monday depicted a confrontation lasting about 12 seconds. The Times reported that federal investigators had access to the video within hours of the 14 January shooting – but did not watch it until nearly three weeks after they had charged the two men. “The video makes it crystal clear that, just like in other situations during Operation Metro Surge, the federal government’s account of what happened simply does not match the facts,” Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said in a statement. Frey’s statement echoed the frustrations of state and county prosecutors over the refusal of federal authorities to share information o...