New Video Busts ICE Lie About Immigrant Beating Agent With a Shovel

It appears that federal immigration authorities have once again lied about an ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

New footage obtained by The New York Times exposes how Immigration and Customs Enforcement lied about one of its agents being beaten with a shovel and broom—and reveals why the agency likely dropped charges against the immigrant they shot.

In January, rideshare delivery driver Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna realized he was being followed by ICE agents. The agents claimed he “recklessly zigzagged through traffic,” while Aljorna claimed the agents were purposefully trying to ram his car. When he arrived home, his roommate and fellow Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was standing outside shoveling snow. When Sosa-Celis dropped the shovel and turned around to run inside he was shot in the leg by the ICE agents. The bullet that hit Sosa-Celis ended up stuck in the house near a children’s playset.

ICE’s version of events? That Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were assaulting them with a broom and a shovel for nearly three minutes, justifying their use of force. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even called it an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” and the men were charged with assault. Now it’s abundantly clear that was a complete lie.

New footage of the incident captured by a city camera at a nearby intersection shows Sosa-Celis throwing the shovel aside as he flees, directly contradicting the agents’ claims. Instead of three minutes, like ICE claimed, the episode lasted about 12 seconds. And yet both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were jailed for weeks afterward.

“There is a snow shovel there, but it doesn’t appear it ever gets used as a weapon,” Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said after reviewing the video. “There is no bludgeoning or anything.… It sounds like an unarmed person got shot running away.”

It’s hard to describe just how despicable this is. Two men were virtually randomly accosted by ICE agents. They shot one in the leg. Then the federal government called them murderers and hit them with heavy charges, all for video footage to invalidate it all.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has been forced to turn down the volume on his white supremacist agenda—but he’s still working behind the scenes.

Miller has overseen Donald Trump’s aggressive law enforcement crackdown on immigrants, urging federal agents to detain 3,000 immigrants every day. Now the ghoulish homeland security adviser has taken a step away from the spotlight after his soft ethnic cleansing left two U.S. citizens dead in Minnesota and sparked a national outcry, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Miller reportedly goaded federal agents to “force confrontations” with anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis before they shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 36-year-old ICU nurse. Miller claimed after the shooting that Pretti was a “would-be assassin.” Eventually, Miller was forced to offer a rare concession: The Customs and Border Protection agents who shot and killed Pretti “may not have been following” protocol, he later admitted.

But it was too late to save face. Miller and the now-ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were forced to cut back on public appearances after becoming the faces of Trump’s increasingly unpopular immigration policies, according to the Times. Miller’s hard-line mass deportation agenda is reportedly falling out of fashion even with the fascists, as mounting leaks have detailed his erratic behavior.

Since facing backlash for promoting violent tactics, Miller has moved to force immigrants out in more subtle ways. In recent calls with immigration officials, Miller asked for information about how immigrants use credit cards, potentially as part of an effort to thwart their ability to open accounts and spend money, officials with knowledge of the discussions told the Times.

In Tennessee and Oklahoma, Miller appears to have helped sprout legislation that would require hospitals, public schools, and other social services to report when undocumented immigrants use their services.

Steve Bannon just got one step closer to overturning his contempt of Congress conviction.

The Supreme Court threw out an appellate court opinion that upheld a conviction against the former Trump adviser Monday, opening a pathway for a trial court to act in the White House’s interest to toss Bannon’s conviction entirely “in the interests of justice.”

Bannon was previously convicted on charges relating to his evasion of a congressional subpoena, after he refused to appear before the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The political tactician originally argued that his testimony was protected, as an extension of Donald Trump’s executive privilege, reported the Associated Press. The House panel contended at the time that was doubtful, considering that Bannon had been out of the federal government for years and was a private citizen by January 6.

Nonetheless, the nine-justice Supreme Court vacated the charges Monday with no explanation and no noted dissents. The only clarification offered was via a brief order, which noted that the Justice Department has moved to drop the indictment against Bannon.

Bannon was at one point at the epicenter of Trump’s universe. He served as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist before the former Apprentice host fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

Despite his fall from grace, Bannon has continued to exert his influence in the far-right sphere. In 2023, the political provocateur assumed he’d continue to wield power under a future Trump administration, promising to slam American broadcasters with “prosecutions and accountability” for reporting that Trump lost the 2020 election.

He went to trial in July 2022 for defying the subpoena, and ultimately served a four-month prison term as a result.

This is story has been updated.

“Very little” is off the table with the war in Iran, according to Donald Trump.

In separate phone calls Sunday, the president suggested that he was open to introducing practically every form of violence in the ongoing conflict unless the Middle Eastern nation agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

That includes the possibility of ground troops, which Trump explicitly said he would not rule out unless Iran makes a deal.

“Normal people would make a deal. Smart people would make a deal,” the president told The Hill. “If they were smart they would make a deal.”

Earlier on that day, Trump threatened that Iranians would be “living in hell” by Tuesday unless the country’s leadership agreed to reopen the vital trade route.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

In another post to his social media platform, Trump wrote: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time.”

Trump carried that tone over to a conversation with ABC News, in which he promised that he would task America’s military with “blowing up the whole country.”

The president also drastically ramped up the conflict’s projected timeline, claiming that the war should be over in “days, not weeks.”

“It should be wrapped up in days because no sane group of people could stand the punishment that’s going to rain down on them if it’s not,” he told ABC.

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the strait funnels approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. Most of that oil would head toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The price per barrel has nonetheless exploded due to the strait’s closure, pushing gas over $4 per gallon in most states (in California, gas in some counties has leaped past $7 a gallon). Diesel shot up by 20 cents over the last week alone.

The economic fallout has struck fear in the Republican Party, whose lawmakers have taken to grumbling about the domestic ramifications of the war, and the impact it will have at the ballot box come November. Trump, meanwhile, has waffled dramatically, claiming in quick succession that he doesn’t care if the strait remains closed and that he wants it reopened.

But beyond the nickels and dimes, the war has cost the lives of more than 2,000 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded.

Donald Trump, rather than attend Easter mass, let loose a vulgar Truth Social post Sunday morning warning Iran that bombings targeting the country’s infrastructure were coming on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened.

In response, Iran on Monday firmly rejected Trump’s 15-point peace plan.

Meanwhile, Iranian embassies around the world have been mocking the president on their own X accounts. The Iranian Embassy in Thailand referenced Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s warning last week that Iran would be sent back to the Stone Age, posting, “Judging by how POTUS swears like a teenager, it seems the US has reached the Stone Age sooner than expected.”

“#POTUS has stooped to an unprecedented level of begging, laced with bitter, hollow rudeness and threats.The desperation is almost palpable, dripping from every syllable—especially the haphazardly hurled expletives,” the Iranian Embassy in Austria posted. “⚠️We solemnly remind everyone, once again, that attacking civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants constitutes a #WarCrime. 📛A further warning: shield all minors under 18 from exposure to #Trump’s rhetoric.”

Iran’s Embassy in South Africa referenced the Constitution’s provision on how the Cabinet and vice president can remove a president from office, posting, “Seriously think about the 25th amendment, Section 4,” while Iran’s Embassy in Bulgaria posted a cartoon of Trump wedged in between the strait in the Persian Gulf.

Trump’s rhetoric in the post, as well as the insult toward Muslims, suggest that something is seriously wrong with him. Instead of the Easter services he was scheduled to attend, his limousine took a short drive around Washington, D.C., and stopped by his golf course in Sterling, Virginia. As Tuesday approaches, will cooler heads prevail in the White House, or is the president’s inner circle content to let him “blow up the entire country” of Iran?