A federal immigration agent deployed to Minnesota accidentally fired his handgun in an Eagan hotel, shooting a bullet through the wall and into the headboard in an adjacent room.
Eagan police were dispatched to the Hampton Inn at 3000 Eagandale Place shortly before 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 after agent Bradley Shaver, 53, shot his Glock 19 while attempting to change out a part on the handle, according to a police report reviewed by Sahan Journal.
The bullet went through the agent’s sweatshirt pocket, through the wall and into the neighboring room, according to the report.
The room’s occupant, Aaron Wukawitz, had just checked into the hotel and was walking down the hallway to his room when he heard the gunshot. He got into his room and heard the federal agent cursing and panicking. A bullet was stuck in the headboard above a bedside table.
“That could have literally killed me,” Wukawitz told Sahan Journal.
More than 3,000 federal agents were sent to the Twin Cities during Operation Metro Surge, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called the largest immigration crackdown in American history.
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol rove through Minnesota streets during the day and sleep in hotels at night. Those hotels have become sites of noise protests and increased anxiety for immigrant workers.
White House border czar Tom Homan said the agency is ending its surge in Minnesota and is calling back most of the agents, with a small force remaining in the state. Immigration arrests continue across the metro, with more activity reported recently in suburban areas.
The accidental gunshot highlights the safety concerns of housing hundreds of armed agents in Minnesota hotels, said Megan Newcomb, an organizer with Sunrise Movement. Sunrise Movement is a youth-run climate advocacy organization that has participated in overnight noise protests, known as “wide awakes,” outside hotels housing federal agents.
“The scary thing about this gun story is not only are hotel workers at risk, but people just coming to Minnesota are at risk,” Newcomb said.
Eagan police collected the gun and ammunition for safekeeping, but did not make an arrest or pursue criminal charges in the case, according to the police report.
The report identified Shaver as the agent who accidentally fired his weapon. Shaver, who has an Ohio driver’s license, agreed to surrender his weapon and was apologetic about the incident, according to the report.
Shaver was one of several immigration agents staying at the Hampton Inn that night. Sahan Journal’s attempts to reach Shaver were unsuccessful.
DHS did not respond to requests for comment about the incident. Hilton Worldwide Holdings, which owns Hampton Inn, did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Pure panic’
Shaver was a Border Patrol agent for over 20 years, mostly working in Ohio, according to his LinkedIn profile. He retired in 2023, and rejoined DHS in 2025 as ICE and Border Patrol surged into areas like the Twin Cities, where he had a 30-day assignment, according to the police report.
Shaver is one of several Sandusky, Ohio Border Patrol agents accused in a 2012 lawsuit of racially profiling Latino residents. A federal judge ruled in 2016 their actions did not violate the constitution.
DHS is actively recruiting recently retired immigration agents back to work amidst the agency’s rapid growth aimed at fueling the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. ICE said it hired more than 12,000 agents last year. The New York Times reported at least 7,500 new agents were hired, including many retirees.
Wakuwitz, 32, lives in Brainerd and works for a company in the Twin Cities. He drove down on Dec. 18 for a company holiday party. He heard the gunshot as he got off the elevator on the third floor. He got into his room and heard his neighbor yelling, “Oh (expletive)!” repeatedly.
He wasn’t sure what had happened, and tried to keep quiet in case the gunfire had been intentional. He looked out the peephole and listened.
Wakuwitz heard Shaver call a colleague on the phone.
“It just went off,” Shaver said, according to Wakuwitz.
“You could tell in his voice it was pure panic, a total accident,” Wakuwitz said.
Then there was a knock at Wakuwitz’s door. Shaver asked if Wakuwitz was OK.
“He was like, ‘The bullet went through your room,’” Wakuwitz recalled.
Wakuwitz found the bullet lodged in the headboard between the mattress and the bedside lamp, at about stomach height. He believes he easily could have been hit while unpacking his bag had he arrived in the room a minute earlier.
He called the front desk and asked for a new room. The police arrived and talked to Shaver and other ICE agents, and took Wakuwitz’s statement.
According to the Eagan police report: Police interviewed Shaver, who told them he was attempting to remove the backstrap, a grip on the rear of his gun’s handle, when the weapon fired. Shaver said he had the gun pointed toward his torso while removing the backstrap, and the bullet went through his shirt and sweatshirt, but somehow missed his body.
Officers took Shaver’s firearm and ammunition for safekeeping and called his ICE supervisor, who told Eagan police he would come collect the weapon.
Eagan police wrote that Shaver was visibly shaken by the incident, and told them nothing like that had ever happened in his years in law enforcement. Shaver told police he was on speakerphone with his wife when the gun went off.
“He described to me that he was holding the gun by the red dot sight and the back of the weapon while he was trying to wedge the backstrap back onto the grip,” an Eagan officer wrote in the report. “As he was doing this, he heard a very loud bang. Initially he thought the gunshot came from somewhere else and he yelled ‘shots fired’ and then told his wife he had to go and hung up. Shaver then felt heat on the left side of his body, looked down and saw the damage to his shirt and realized the shot had come from his own weapon.”
Shaver told police he knocked on neighboring rooms to ensure no one was hurt, and then called the hotel front desk and his supervisor.
“I had Shaver show me how he was standing and holding the gun so I could understand how it went through his clothing and into the wall,” the Eagan officer wrote. “What he showed me matched up with where the damage was and how this could have occurred.”
Wakuwitz accepts that the shot was an accident, but one he finds hard to understand. Wakuwitz is a gun owner with a conceal carry permit, he said. He regularly carries a handgun, but didn’t bring it to Eagan because he was using a company car and planned to go to a party with alcohol, he said.
Wakuwitz and his buddies who also conceal and carry pistols talked through his experience at the Eagan hotel repeatedly, imagining several scenarios. Accidents happen, he said, but if you’re carrying a handgun, you have to be sure not to touch the trigger if you don’t plan to shoot.
“There’s no way you could do this unless your finger was on the trigger,” Wakuwitz said. “There’s no way.”
