The door to a white duplex was boarded up Thursday morning on 24th Avenue North east of Lyndale Avenue in north Minneapolis. An upper-level window was shattered.
A grey Ford Focus sedan was stuck on a snowbank on the corner of 24th Avenue North and 6th Street half a block away. A DoorDash delivery bag and a sealed, full to-go drink sat in the front seat, a child’s car seat strapped in the back.
In a Thursday news release, DHS confirmed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and wounded Julio Cesar Sosa Celis Wednesday evening in the area after federal agents tried to conduct a “targeted traffic stop” on him. The agency said Sosa Celis is undocumented and came to the United States from Venezuela in 2022.
Sosa Celis allegedly fled from federal officers in his car before crashing the vehicle and fleeing on foot. One officer caught up to him and tried to apprehend him, resulting in a struggle on the ground, said the news release.
Christina Johnson lives near the duplex ICE surrounded Wednesday night as part of the sprawling, tense immigration activity being executed across the Twin Cities. Johnson told Sahan Journal that she’s lived in the neighborhood less than a year and didn’t know the family living there.
“I just know there’s a bunch of kids,” Johnson said.
Her home was inundated with chemical irritants used by ICE in an attempt to disperse protesters Wednesday night. She’s been trying to air it out, but freezing temperatures made it difficult.
“It filled the whole house,” Johnson said of the chemical irritants, adding that the block didn’t quiet down until about 2 a.m. Thursday.
Family’s frantic Facebook Live video
A video posted on Facebook Live by the wounded man’s family during the incident includes audio of his wife calling 911. Other family members are heard frantically describing the situation pleading for assistance over speaker phone.
“Please help us, we have kids,” a man, whose identity is unclear, tells 911 dispatchers in Spanish.
A woman tells the dispatcher ICE was following her husband, tried to hit his vehicle and then he fled on foot to his home. When he shut the front door, she says in the video recording of her 911 call, an agent shot him in the leg.
“Right now, they are outside the house trying to enter,” the woman says.
Adults in the house are heard in the background trying to calm small children and keep them away from the door. In the alley behind the family’s house, infant diapers, glass jars of baby food and a used sheet of stickers sat on the ground next to the trash can Thursday.
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The DHS statement issued Thursday said that as the ICE agent struggled with Sosa Celis Wednesday evening, Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma, who the agency said are undocumented immigrants from Venezuela, ran out of a nearby home and attacked the ICE agent with a shovel and a broomstick.
Sosa Celis then wriggled free and joined in on the assault, according to DHS, prompting the ICE officer to fire a “defensive shot to defend his life.”
Sosa Celis was hit in the leg, and though the three men ran inside and barricaded themselves in a nearby home, ICE agents eventually entered and arrested all three men. According to the DHS statement, Sosa Celis and the agent who shot him remain in the hospital. It was not clear whether Sosa Celis knew the two men who came to his defense.
Reached by phone Thursday, George Jou, the duplex’s landlord, said he didn’t have any information about what happened to his tenants.
“What I know is from the news,” he said. “The shooting did not happen in the house.”
Feds say immigration agents have ‘immunity’
A day before the shooting, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a video clip on its official X account showing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Fox News declaring to all ICE officers that they have federal immunity when performing their duties.
Miller, who is behind much of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, claimed that anyone who tries to obstruct or “lay a hand on” federal agents is committing a felony, and insinuated that the DOJ will prosecute observers and local officials they deem as obstructing ICE.
“You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties,” Miller said in the video. “The Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blamed Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for the struggle between the federal officer and the three men Wednesday, saying they refuse to cooperate with the thousands of federal agents deployed to Minneapolis.
“They are encouraging impeding and assault against our law enforcement which is a federal crime, a felony,” Noem said in the DHS news release. “This is putting the people of Minnesota in harm’s way.”
In a Facebook post Wednesday night, Walz lobbed the same criticism back at the Trump administration.
“What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets,” Walz said in the post. “But Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace. Don’t give him what he wants.”
During a late-night briefing hours after the shooting, Frey said he’s only ever encouraged peaceful protest against ICE officers, who he said are causing chaos.
“Show me a single place where I have encouraged violence,” Frey told reporters. “I have said from the get-go to people in Minneapolis, ‘Do not take the bait. We are better than that.’”
Sahan Journal reporter Becky Z. Dernbach contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
