Category: Washington Post

The family of a man shot in the leg by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday has disputed key elements of the Department of Homeland Security’s version of the incident, saying the shooting happened at the door of the man’s house as he let his housemate inside, rather than out in the street during a scuffle.

The Department of Homeland Security has said an ICE officer shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis as he was assaulting the officer “with a shovel or broom stick.” The agency said the incident began when the officer attempted to stop Sosa-Celis in his car, and that Sosa-Celis tried to flee and then got into an altercation with the officer outside, joined by two housemates.

But Sosa-Celis’ mother, citing an account from her son, said DHS had actually been pursuing one of his housemates, who Sosa-Celis let into their house just before the shooting. Alicia Celis said her son made no mention of anyone running from the house to attack ICE officers.

A Facebook Live video reviewed by the Washington Post includes people at the house telling 911 dispatchers that the shooting happened as the men closed the door at the residence. Another video includes Sosa-Celis mentioning some sort of scuffle before any gunshots were fired, but he does not specify whether that struggle happened at the door or in the street.

Celis, who lives in Venezuela, told the Post that her son called her from the hospital after he was taken into custody by ICE. He told her he had received a panicked call Wednesday evening from Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna, who is one of his housemates and a fellow DoorDash driver, Celis said. Ajorna said he was being pursued by ICE and that he needed Sosa-Celis to let him in the front door of the house, where they and their partners and children and others live.

Sosa-Celis opened the door to let Ajorna inside, Celis said her son told her. Ajorna ran indoors. As Sosa-Celis went to close the door an ICE officer shot him in the leg, his mother said. The men retreated into the house, and people inside called emergency dispatchers, Celis said.

A short time later, ICE officers broke down the front door and went inside the building, Celis said. They arrested Ajorna, Sosa-Celis, and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma, who Celis said was not involved in the incident and was in the basement of the house, where he lives. All three men are undocumented immigrants from Venezuela, according to DHS; Sosa-Celis’ family said his temporary protected status to live legally in the United States lapsed last year. DHS had not announced charges against the men as of Friday afternoon.

In its account of Wednesday night’s shooting, DHS alleged that Sosa-Celis fled in his car during an attempted traffic stop, crashed into a parked car, and then ran away. An officer chased him and attempted to arrest him, the agency said, adding that Sosa-Celis resisted and began to “violently assault the officer.” DHS alleged that Sosa-Celis and the officer were struggling when Ajorna and Hernandez-Ledezma came out of a nearby residence and hit the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.

DHS also said Sosa-Celis freed himself of the struggle and hit the officer “with a shovel or broom stick,” at which point the officer fired his gun. The agency called the shot “defensive” and said the officer feared for his life. DHS said the men ran into the residence and ICE officers then arrested them.

When asked to provide additional evidence or body-camera footage of the alleged attack and to address the claims presented by Sosa-Celis’s family, DHS referred the Post to remarks Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem made Thursday morning.

“I would say that our agent is beat up,” Noem told reporters. “He’s bruised, he’s injured, he’s getting treatment. And we’re thankful that he made it out alive.”

The agency also did not respond to questions Thursday evening about the medical conditions of the officer and Sosa-Celis.

The shooting of Sosa-Celis — and the angry and sometimes violent protests from residents that followed later — came one week after an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good as she and other residents monitored and protested ICE activity on a residential street.

The federal government over the past week has increased the number of officers in the city to 3,000, a massive deployment, with vows to send more personnel to quell what one administration official called an “insurrection.” Residents have objected to agents detaining people and said they feel like their city is under attack.

Some of the family’s account of Wednesday night’s shooting appeared to align with what was said in a Facebook Live video from inside the home that evening. A chaotic scene appears to unfold as children cry and multiple people speak over each other. The people in the livestream report to 911 dispatchers that one of their family members was shot in the leg as they closed the door of the residence, with ICE officers outside. The Post confirmed the video was filmed from the same address on Minneapolis’s north side.

Sosa-Celis also joined a different Facebook Live video broadcast the same night by a person who Sosa-Celis’ relatives described as a friend of his. That livestream shows Sosa-Celis describing the incident from what appears to be a hospital bed. Speaking Spanish and using a phrase that can be interpreted several ways, he indicates there was some kind of interaction with ICE personnel before the shooting, though it’s unclear whether he’s describing it happening outside the building or as he moved to close the door on the ICE officer.

Sosa-Celis also joined that livestream from his home in the moments after the shooting. He can be heard telling the host of the video that he needs assistance. “We need help, friend. We have ICE here,” said Sosa-Celis, providing his address to viewers. “They shot us, they shot us. They shot us, and hit me in the leg.”

When asked by the host if ICE had been following him, Sosa-Celis, who has his camera pointed toward a window outside, replies that ICE had been following Ajorna.

Neighbors who live behind the house where the shooting happened also confirmed some elements of the family’s version.

Brieella Johnson, 35, said she was home preparing dinner for her children at about 6:30 p.m. — her husband had just left with one of their sons for Bible study — when she heard two men arguing outside the house on North 24th Avenue, which she can see from her back deck.

“We heard two men arguing, then we heard a screech of the vehicle trying to go, and then we heard two to three gunshots,” Johnson said, holding her baby and surrounded by her six older children in her living room on Thursday morning.

She said she saw uniformed ICE officers with guns drawn “swarm” the house. She heard some of the officers shout, “Come out now!” and “Come out now, or we’re going to shoot!” and other things in Spanish.

Johnson said she saw ICE officers shoot at one of the windows of the house, then, “They threw one smoke bomb, then yelled ‘Fire’ … Then afterwards we could see smoke in the second floor window.” One of the building’s front windows appeared to have been shattered, she said.

Johnson heard the DHS account of the shooting and said, “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.” She questioned why the ICE officer ended up grappling with and chasing someone he was trying to detain, why he didn’t call for backup sooner, and why he fired in a residential area so close to families with children.

“Even if you’re going after someone you know is illegal, have back up,” she said.

Tommy Ross, 72, stood outside his rental house around the block from the shooting location and said he heard three shots late Wednesday and saw the gray Ford sedan mired in the snow and uniformed ICE officers “all around it.”

Ross, who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years, said he recognized the car: He had met the owner, a young man with a Spanish accent, after he struck Ross’ Nissan sedan about a month ago, and they exchanged insurance information. He said he did not recall the man’s name.

Ross and his family heard a car wreck about 7 p.m. “ICE was chasing them people. They ran into the house. There was a fight inside the house,” said Tommy Ross Jr., 40, who was visiting his father at the time of the shooting.

He said he heard a woman shout: “Get out of my house!,” then heard ICE officers shout, “Freeze!” and “Get on the floor!”

Following ICE officers’ detention of the three men Wednesday night, tensions flared as neighbors and protesters arrived at the scene. Some protesters heckled, filmed with cellphones, and threw fireworks and a water bottle at officers. Officers fired tear gas and flash bangs at the crowd. Conservative influencer Nick Sortor posted video footage on social media that showed protesters attacking empty ICE vehicles. On Thursday, a damaged ICE laptop and a torn FBI property receipt could be seen on the street.

“They were combative all night,” the younger Ross said. “They were shooting tear gas, it was all in the air, you couldn’t stand outside without coughing.” The activity was still going on when he headed to bed at 2:30 a.m., he said. “I went to sleep to ‘boom, boom, boom.’ Sounded like a war zone.”

Local and state officials have called on ICE to leave Minnesota, while the Trump administration has condemned residents who are tracking, protesting, and trying to disrupt ICE activity.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, raising the possibility of taking the highly unusual step of sending U.S. troops into a domestic city. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, urged the federal government not to escalate the tension.

“They’re trying to make a riot out of it,” the elder Ross said of Trump administration officials, choking up as he spoke. “Governor Walz is doing a good thing, trying to keep them together.”

Trump on Friday addressed his comments on the Insurrection Act, telling reporters outside the White House: “If I needed it, I’d use it. I don’t think I need it right now.”

Johnson, the neighbor, said she does not support Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. “I don’t think they need U.S. troops or the National Guard. They need a safe and secure plan,” she said of ICE officers. “If the federal government is going to continue to use ICE, they need to treat these people like humans … You can’t just go in guns blazing. You disrupt communities. You make people scared.”

But her husband Bryant Johnson, 35, who runs a painting business, blamed local and state officials for not preventing or doing more to address welfare fraud claims that intensified Trump’s attention on Minnesota. Like Trump, he blamed the fraud on Minneapolis’s large Somali community, because many of the dozens of people implicated in the scandal are Somali American. Most Somalis in the Twin Cities, a population of more than 83,000, are U.S. citizens.

“I feel like a lot of this was brought on by our mayor and our government officials that were very well aware of the fraud,” Bryant Johnson said. “And if they didn’t let that kind of stuff continue and go on, we might not have this much of a presence of ICE.”

“When you come here from another country to defraud our country of hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added, “you’ve got to go.”

His wife shook her head. “There has to be a different way of getting them out,” she said. “There’s plenty of Americans that committed fraud. They go to jails, they don’t get killed.”

Sosa-Celis’ father-in-law, who lives in Saint Paul and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is undocumented, described Sosa-Celis as a hardworking man who provides for his family in the United States and Venezuela.

Sosa-Celis’ mother said Thursday evening that she had not heard from her son since Wednesday night and does not know where he is or the status of his injury.

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” she said. “He never has a ‘no’ for me … He says, ‘Here, Mom. Take as much as you want.’”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” and tariff deals with China on Friday after a four-day visit that analysts said was an effort reset a deeply troubled relationship amid Canada’s efforts to diversify trade away from the United States.

Carney announced the easing of some of the tariffs the two countries had imposed on each other, with Canada agreeing to allow in 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles at a much-reduced tariff of 6.1%, while China will cut canola seed tariffs to about 15%.

The moves were a sign of how President Donald Trump’s levies on allies and adversaries alike are reordering global economic relationships, pushing two of the United States’ largest trading partners closer together after years of strained ties to offset the costs.

Earlier in the day, Carney met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who described the visit as part of a “turnaround” in Sino-Canadian ties.

China, Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, imposed steep tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods, including rapeseed and beef, last year. Those duties were retaliation for Canada’s levies on Chinese-made electric vehicles, steel, and aluminum. Ottawa announced those tariffs in 2024, as part of an effort to align itself with U.S. policy on China.

Despite the easing of some tariffs and the optimistic words from both leaders, the visit was largely an opening “icebreaker,” said Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the Fudan University Center for American Studies. Sino-Canadian ties, he added, still face “many difficulties, especially in areas like ideology and national security. It’s an exploratory process, and they are focusing on the so-called low-hanging fruit first.”

Reflecting the assessments of many other analysts, Zhao also said the most striking part of the visit was the way Canada was “using the restoration of ties with China as a way to de-risk its relationship with the U.S.”

Carney’s visit was the first by a Canadian prime minister in nearly a decade, and Sino-Canadian ties have been in a deep freeze for nearly as long. But Canada has been seeking a thaw as part of an effort to diversify trade away amid Trump’s tariffs and threats to use “economic force” to make it the 51st state.

For Canada, a country caught in the middle between China and the United States — its two largest trading partners — the trade diversification strategy has meant knotty choices. For Carney, a political rookie who won a federal election last year by casting himself as the best person to manage the break in U.S.-Canada ties, the China visit has required walking a tightrope.

Carney’s predecessor and fellow Liberal, Justin Trudeau, was the last Canadian prime minister to travel to China. He, too, sought closer economic relations with Beijing, but his 2017 visit ended with the two sides deeply divided on several issues and without an expected announcement on the start of formal free trade talks.

That chasm only widened the next year, after China detained two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessperson Michael Spavor — in what was widely viewed as retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei executive wanted in the U.S. on bank and wire fraud charges.

The “two Michaels,” as they were known in Canada, were held in secret prisons on vague charges of espionage and stealing state secrets, allegations for which China never provided evidence. They were tried in secret proceedings from which Canadian diplomats were barred, in violation of a consular agreement between the two countries.

The Canadians were released in 2021, after Meng reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that allowed her to return to China in exchange for acknowledging some wrongdoing in the criminal case. A Pew Research Center poll that year found a record of more than 70% of Canadians had an “unfavorable” view of China — up from 45% in 2018.

Canadian intelligence officials have accused China of “clandestinely and deceptively” seeking to interfere in Canada’s federal elections with the goal of supporting candidates favorable to its strategic interests. They have also alleged that the country conducts transnational repression in Canada, targeting dissidents and lawmakers who are vocal opponents of Beijing.

Critics of Carney’s rapprochement of China have argued that closer ties could spell trouble, given Beijing’s history of weaponizing access to its markets. Not long after the two Michaels were detained, China imposed tariffs on Canadian canola in what was widely viewed here as further retaliation for Meng’s arrest.

Opponents of the recalibration in the relationship have also warned that it could draw the ire of the Trump administration, which has been seeking to curtail China’s influence, ahead of a planned review this year of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Chris LaCivita, a former Trump campaign manager, said on X that drawing closer to China “won’t end well for Carney.”

Canadian officials and businesses view the continued existence of the North American free-trade pact as critical for the country’s economic prosperity. More than 70% of Canadian exports have typically gone to the United States. But Trump, who brokered the USMCA and called it “the best agreement we’ve ever made,” said this week that he doesn’t “really care about it.”

“There’s no real advantage to us,” Trump told reporters in Dearborn, Mich., renewing fears in Canada that he could rip the deal up. “It’s irrelevant to me. … Canada wants it. They need it. We don’t.”

Carney has been unable to reach a deal to ease the tariffs that the U.S. has imposed on Canadian goods. In October, Trump terminated all trade talks with Canada over a television advertisement critical of tariffs that was broadcast on U.S. networks and paid for by the government of Ontario. Canadian officials said they were close to a deal before Trump suspended negotiations.

At home, the China reset has also proved tricky.

Provincial leaders and farmers in the prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which have been hardest hit by the Chinese tariffs, have long pressed Carney to ease the levies on China. But the move is poised to anger officials in the province of Ontario, the heart of Canada’s auto industry.

Officials there have supported the tariffs on China, viewing them as necessary for protecting Canadian auto jobs and citing national security concerns. Canada’s auto sector is facing an existential crisis, analysts say, because of Trump’s tariffs on autos, steel, and aluminum. Trump administration officials have repeatedly asserted they do not want to make cars with Canada.

Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty have infuriated Canadians. A Pew Research Center poll in July found that 59% of Canadians view the United States as their country’s top threat, while just 17% see China that way.

President Donald Trump on Friday suggested that Kevin Hassett, a top contender to run the Federal Reserve, could remain in his current job as head of the National Economic Council, casting new uncertainty over the race to succeed Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell.

Speaking at a healthcare event at the White House, Trump said Hassett performed well as a surrogate for the president on television and the potential for him to vacate his current role was a “serious concern.”

“I actually want to keep you where you are if you want to know the truth. We don’t want to lose him, Susie,” Trump said, addressing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. “We’ll see how it all works out.”

Analysts and officials close to the White House have said the sweepstakes to succeed Powell may have been scrambled this week when Powell publicly disclosed that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation tied to a massive office renovation project for the central bank’s headquarters overlooking the National Mall.

Powell and supporters characterized the move as an attempt to undercut the Fed’s independence on monetary policy. At least two Republican senators said they won’t vote for any nominee to replace Powell until the legal matter is resolved. And some Fed watchers have said the Senate might be less inclined to approve someone so close to the White House.

Former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon cast that pushback against Hassett in far more combative terms. “The Globalist circle-the-wagons with all the living former Fed Chairs immediately defending Powell sealed Hassett’s fate,” he wrote in a text message. “The anti-Trump Senate cabal signaled they would never confirm someone professionally close to the President.”

Trump first nominated Powell to the top Fed role in 2017 but quickly soured on him over interest-rate policy. At a January 2020 signing ceremony, Trump suggested that he wished he had instead tapped former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, who was a runner-up for the job.

“I would have been very happy with you,” Trump said, singling out Warsh. “I could have used you a little bit here. Why weren’t you more forceful when you wanted that job?”

Analysts said the remarks could place Warsh in a stronger position to become the next chair of the Fed when Powell’s tenure in the role ends in May. Trump had signaled this week that he was choosing between one of “the two Kevins.” He was expected to announce his choice as early as this month.

In one sign of Warsh’s improved odds, investors in betting markets early Friday afternoon assessed the former Fed governor had a roughly 60% change of replacing Powell, up from around 40% earlier in the day.

Other candidates in the mix for the role include sitting Fed governor Christopher Waller and Rick Rieder, an executive at BlackRock. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has helped spearhead the process for selecting Powell’s replacement but has said he isn’t interested in the role.

Hassett has acknowledged that the race remains unsettled. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference in December, he cautioned against assuming a final decision had been made. “He makes his choice, and then he changes his mind, too,” Hassett said, referring to the president.