Evidence contradicts Trump immigration officials’ accounts of violent encounters
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The review seems to show a pattern in which officials rushed to defend immigration officers without waiting for key facts to emerge.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump’s top immigration officials have repeatedly made statements after violent encounters involving federal agents – including two fatal shootings of US citizens in Minneapolis in January – that were later contradicted by evidence, a Reuters review found.
Trump officials quickly painted the two recently shot dead – Ms Renee Good and Mr Alex Pretti – as aggressors and said the shootings were justified.
But video and other evidence soon emerged that contrasted sharply with these accounts
The Reuters review included these two incidents and four others in recent months that, collectively, show a pattern in which officials rushed to defend immigration officers without waiting for key facts to emerge – in what former immigration officials called a clear break with past practice for federal agencies in such situations.
These initial representations have been challenged by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.
In one non-lethal shooting in Minnesota, court documents emerged showing the incident began with a case of mistaken identity. A death in a detention centre that the US Department of Homeland Security described as an attempted suicide was later ruled a homicide by a county medical examiner.
“They are trying to control a narrative from the very start, and they don’t seem to care when they’re proven wrong,” said Mr David Lapan, who was the DHS press secretary in 2017, during Mr Trump’s first administration.
In response to a Reuters request for comment, DHS pointed to previous statements about the incidents involving their officers, stressing the need for officer safety as they carry out Mr Trump’s crackdown.
“We have seen a highly coordinated campaign of violence against our law enforcement,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, adding that the department aims to “give swift, accurate information to the American people”.
Here is a look at six incidents in Minneapolis, Chicago and Texas:
DHS said Mr Pretti brandished a gun but video showed a cellphone
After Mr Pretti, 37, was shot and killed during an encounter
DHS said Mr Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun” in a post on the social network X, sharing a photo of the alleged weapon.
“The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted,” DHS said.
White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr Trump’s immigration agenda, said on X that Mr Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin”.
Video of the encounter verified by Reuters showed Mr Pretti holding a cellphone and not a gun as he was wrestled to the ground by the agents. Video evidence also showed that an officer removed Mr Pretti’s gun from his body shortly before the first shots were fired.
He had a legal permit to carry the weapon.
In response to a Reuters request for comment on Jan 26, DHS said in a statement that Pretti “committed a federal crime while armed as he obstructed an active law enforcement operation” and that the situation was “evolving”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Jan 26 that Mr Trump “wants to let the investigation continue and let the facts lead”.
DHS claims good ‘weaponised her vehicle’
Homeland Security described Ms Good, the 37-year-old woman shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis
It said the officer who killed her “saved his own life and that of his fellow officers”.
Mr Trump said Ms Good “ran over the ICE officer”, who he said shot her in self-defence.
Videos of the shooting taken from several vantage points – including cellphone video recorded by the officer who shot Ms Good – conflicted with those claims.
The videos show Ms Good in her car as agents rushed up toward her as her vehicle partly blocked the street.
One of the agents, Mr Jonathan Ross, positioned himself near the front of her car; another was standing by the driver-side window. The videos show the car moving forward, its wheels turned away from Ross, who drew his weapon and fired three shots at Ms Good as her car went past, killing her.
Video reviewed by Reuters appeared to show Mr Ross and the vehicle making contact, but Reuters could not determine whether Ross touched the vehicle or if it struck him.
ICE pursued car thinking driver was someone else
On Jan 15, DHS said officers “were conducting a targeted traffic stop” in Minneapolis for Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis when he sped away, crashed his car and fled on foot to an apartment building.
DHS said at the time that Mr Sosa-Celis and two other men hit an ICE officer who pursued him with a snow shovel and broom handle, prompting the shooting.
Court documents unsealed last week told a different story.
An FBI affidavit said the ICE officers had scanned a licence plate registered with a different person suspected of an immigration violation, leading them to chase the wrong person before the alleged assault and shooting.
The affidavit said another man was driving the car and was the sole occupant – not Mr Sosa-Celis. The car’s actual driver – another Venezuelan immigrant – crashed and fled to an apartment building where Mr Sosa-Celis was present, it said.
At the apartment building, an ICE officer trying to detain the car’s driver was struck by him and Mr Sosa-Celis with a broom – and a third man with a shovel – before the officer fired his weapon, the FBI affidavit said.
While DHS said initially that the officer “fired a defensive shot to defend his life” during the ambush, the FBI affidavit said the alleged attackers dropped the broom and shovel when they saw the officer draw his gun and were fleeing toward the apartment as he fired.
Ms Robin Wolpert, an attorney representing Mr Sosa-Celis, said he would plead not guilty if indicted.
Ms Wolpert said the affidavit established that the ICE officer shot Mr Sosa-Celis from 3m away as he was fleeing, which showed the officer “was not in immediate danger”.
DHS did not address the FBI affidavit with the different account of the incident when asked for comment.
Shifting statements after detention death
When ICE announced the death of Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos in a Texas detention centre on Jan 3, it said he experienced “medical distress” and that the incident was being investigated.
A Jan 15 report in the Washington Post said the El Paso County medical examiner’s office was likely to rule it a homicide, with the preliminary cause of death “asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.”
The Post cited a witness who said guards were choking Mr Lunas, who said he could not breathe, details that were absent from ICE’s statement.
DHS issued a new statement after the article was published that said Mr Lunas tried to commit suicide and then resisted security officers and died.
The medical examiner released a report last week that found the death was a homicide due to asphyxia from neck and torso compression, according to the Post.
The death was one of six deaths in ICE detention in January, an unusually high number.
Judge calls out government’s ‘widespread misrepresentations’
A federal judge wrote in a November opinion restricting immigration agents’ use of force in Chicago that the government’s “widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that defendants say they are doing in their characterisation” of the crackdown.
In one instance, Homeland Security posted on X that “rioters surrounded law enforcement” and “attacked” a van carrying detainees, an encounter that escalated until someone threw a rock at Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, hitting him in the head. Five days later, Mr Bovino said in court that the rock had not hit him when he first deployed tear gas.
“It did almost hit me,” he said.
US District Court Judge Sara Ellis said Mr Bovino “lied multiple times” about why he needed to throw a tear gas canister at protesters.
Neither DHS nor Mr Bovino responded to requests for comment about the incident and the comments by Judge Ellis.
In the same case, Judge Ellis also questioned authorities’ claims that they needed to use tear gas so that they could leave the scene of another operation in October 2025, saying the agents themselves had prolonged the encounter through their actions.
“Every minor inconsistency adds up, and at some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything” the government said, Judge Ellis wrote.
Homeland Security said in a statement after the ruling that officers were facing “rioters, gangbangers and terrorists” and that they had shown “incredible restraint in exhausting all options before force is escalated”.
Government drops case against US citizen shot by border agent
On Oct 4, 2025, Homeland Security said that several drivers “rammed” law enforcement officers in Broadview, a Chicago suburb where an immigration detention centre has been the site of clashes between protesters and immigration agents.
DHS said one of the drivers, a woman, was “armed with a semi-automatic weapon” and that law enforcement was “forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed US citizen”.
The woman, US citizen Marimar Martinez, was shot by an agent five times. She survived and was indicted on charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
The officer later boasted of his marksmanship in text messages shared in court.
Martinez’s lawyer Christopher Parente told the court that footage from one of the agents bodycams contradicted the DHS account. Ms Martinez, 30, said that one of the agents actually rammed her vehicle with his.
Mr Parente told Reuters Ms Martinez left her gun in her purse on the passenger seat and never brandished it. DHS was wrong about the location of the incident – it occurred in the Chicago neighborhood of Brighton Park, not Broadview.
On Nov 20, government prosecutors asked the court to dismiss the case against Ms Martinez, saying it was “reviewing new facts and information” from the months-long operation.
DHS referred any questions about federal charges to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. REUTERS
