Two ICE agents have been placed on leave and face possible termination or criminal prosecution after their sworn testimony about a January shooting in north Minneapolis fell apart under scrutiny. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons confirmed the investigation Friday, and the U.S. Attorney's Office has asked a judge to dismiss charges against the two men the agents accused of assaulting them.
KSTP reported that the agents' accounts didn't survive contact with the evidence. And the agency itself is the one saying so.
ICE agents were operating in north Minneapolis on Jan. 14 when an encounter with Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna turned violent. The two men ran inside a home after being chased by agents. Witness accounts and video evidence indicate an agent fired a shot through the door, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg.
The day after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem offered a very different version of events:
"Last night what we saw was three individuals weaponize shovels and brooms and attack an ICE officer that had to defend himself."
Charges were brought against both men. Neighbors disputed the DHS account at the time. Then ICE and the Department of Justice conducted a further review — and the official story unraveled.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons didn't mince words in his Friday statement. The review, he said:
"Revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements."
Lyons went further:
"Lying under oath is a serious federal offense. The U.S. Attorney's Office is actively investigating these false statements."
The two agents now face termination or possible criminal prosecution. The U.S. Attorney's Office moved to dismiss the charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna — a tacit admission that the case against them was built on testimony the government no longer trusts.
This is accountability moving in the right direction, and it's coming from inside the administration. Lyons didn't bury the findings. He announced them publicly and referred the matter for criminal investigation. That matters.
There is no conservative principle that protects officers who lie under oath. None. The entire case for robust immigration enforcement rests on the rule of law — and the rule of law means nothing if the agents enforcing it fabricate testimony to justify their actions.
Two agents who allegedly shot a man through a door, then swore out statements that didn't match the evidence, didn't just betray their oaths. They handed every open-borders activist in America a gift-wrapped talking point.
Every legitimate arrest ICE makes — and there are thousands — becomes harder to defend when a case like this surfaces. Every credible use-of-force report gets second-guessed. The damage these two agents may have done to the broader enforcement mission is incalculable, and it's right that the administration is treating this with the seriousness it deserves.
This isn't the only recent case where initial federal accounts diverged sharply from what the evidence later showed. Just hours after the Minneapolis shooting, DHS posted on social media about a separate incident involving Alex Pretti, declaring:
"This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
After multiple video angles went public, federal officials — including the President — appeared to walk back those comments.
In Chicago, agents shot a woman named Miramar Martinez five times, claiming she had tried to ram them with her car. Weeks later, the government quietly asked a judge to drop the charges against her.
Rachel Moran, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, has tracked these cases:
"We have seen a lot of claims by federal agents when they've engaged in violence where they say it's justified and the evidence proves otherwise."
On the Martinez case specifically, Moran noted:
"Now it's come out that video evidence proved no, the agent attacked her first. It's hard to trust an agency that makes such quick, immediate pronouncements that are then somewhat routinely contradicted by evidence."
Moran's commentary carries an obvious ideological slant — she's building a case against ICE enforcement writ large, not just against individual bad actors. Conservatives should reject that leap. The existence of dishonest agents doesn't indict the mission. Police departments deal with this distinction every day.
But the underlying facts demand a response that conservatives should welcome, not resist. If ICE agents are fabricating sworn testimony — and their own director says they are — then removing those agents and prosecuting them isn't a concession to the left.
It's the bare minimum required to preserve the credibility of an enforcement apparatus that the country desperately needs to function.
The left wants to use every incident like this to argue that immigration enforcement itself is illegitimate. The way to defeat that argument isn't to circle the wagons around agents who lied.
It's to hold them accountable swiftly and visibly — exactly what Lyons appears to be doing — so the thousands of officers who do their jobs honestly aren't dragged down by the ones who don't.
The U.S. Attorney's Office investigation into the agents' false statements is ongoing. If the evidence supports prosecution, these agents should face the full weight of federal perjury statutes.
Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg, and Aljorna will have their charges dismissed — not because they're sympathetic figures, but because the government's own case collapsed.
The administration acted. Lyons spoke publicly. The investigation is moving. That's how institutions maintain legitimacy — not by pretending every agent is above reproach, but by demonstrating that the ones who aren't will be dealt with.
Enforce the border. Enforce the law. And enforce it against the badge when the badge breaks it. That's not a contradiction. That's the whole point.
