ICE agents investigated after DOJ drops Minneapolis charges (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Tonight, a pair of ICE agents are under investigation after being accused of lying about a shooting that happened of a man in Minneapolis. Last month, you might remember this story. The agents claimed that two men had attacked them with a broom and a shovel as they were carrying out an immigration operation. One of the men was shot in the leg by an officer. And when that happened, obviously it raised questions. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem came out and said it was, quote, an attempted murder of federal law enforcement. She accused the governor, Tim Walz, in Minnesota, the mayor, Jacob Frey, of encouraging assaults against law enforcement. And also, the same day that she put out that statement, she was at the White House and said this about ICE agents in Minneapolis.

[00:00:42] Speaker 2: Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years, that this administration has used, that the previous administration used. They are doing everything correctly.

[00:00:55] Speaker 1: Okay, well, given that, we've now learned the Justice Department has actually dropped charges against those two men. And in a turn of events, they are now being investigated because they are being accused of lying under oath about what happened. There's video evidence apparently that contradicts what they said actually occurred. And this is just the latest case where the initial description that we get from the Trump administration after a shooting like this has happened has fallen apart once all the facts have come out. Obviously, the highest profile examples of this, I don't have to remind you of. You remember it yourself. Rene Good, Alex Pretty, both accused of being domestic terrorists before we saw all the different video angles of what happened when they were killed at the hands of federal agents. There's also the case of Miramar Martinez in Chicago. Just this week, CNN obtained the body camera footage from October when the American citizen and school teacher was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent. Now, the Department of Homeland Security had initially said that Border Patrol law enforcement officers were ambushed by domestic terrorists that rammed federal agents with their vehicles. The FBI director posted, attack our law enforcement and this FBI will find you and bring you to justice. Once the evidence came out, federal prosecutors asked for that case to be dropped.

[00:02:27] Speaker 2: And as they were wrestling on the ground trying to detain this individual, two other men came out of that building and started attacking him with weapons and shovels and brooms. And as it was three on one, the agent feared for his life and defensively had to take action.

[00:02:42] Speaker 3: Well, today, a judge dismissed charges against the two and two immigration officers are now under investigation, seen as Priscilla Alvarez joins us with more. So what's the administration saying here?

[00:02:52] Speaker 4: Well, Anderson, it was the Justice Department that had filed a motion to dismiss these charges, which, as you said, have now been dismissed by this judge. But it is a significant development in what was a string of high profile shootings where there were conflicting accounts from the federal agents as well as from the eyewitnesses. And in this case, as you mentioned, this occurred last month. It was after the shooting of Renee Good, where officials claim these two Venezuelan men had assaulted the federal agents, which is what led him to shoot one of them in the leg. You heard there from Secretary Noem that they had assaulted him with a shovel and with a broom. But both of these men had denied that. And in reviewing the video and speaking with eyewitnesses, they found that there was nothing to support the agent's account of what transpired here, which is what now has led to this federal investigation into whether these officers had lied under oath. I want to read you a significant statement from the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director, Todd Lyons. This is what he said today. He said, quote, today, a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements. Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation. Lying under oath is a serious federal offense. The U.S. Attorney's Office is actively investigating these false statements. He goes on to say that the officers may face termination of employment as well as potential criminal prosecution. Now, of course, Anderson, we have covered at length the moments in which there have been conflicting accounts over the shooting of Rene Good, as well as Alex Pretty, but certainly in some of these other instances. And this statement was notable because we were hearing from their boss, the acting director of ICE, who said that this review is ongoing now, and these officers may face termination as they determine whether they lied under oath over an incident that resulted in a shot fired at a man's leg.

[00:04:48] Speaker 1: How important is it to be able to trust what you are hearing about an official account from the Department of Homeland Security?

[00:04:57] Speaker 5: It's very important. It's important for our people to be able to trust their government. And obviously that, you know, integrity and that trust has been completely thrown out the window under the Trump administration from HHS to DHS, almost every single agency you can think of. The heads of those agencies aren't concerned with how we bring back integrity to our government and how we can ensure our people trust our government, but they just want to do the bidding of Donald Trump. And they also want to ensure that they're providing cover for everything they do, that they make zero mistakes, that everything that they do is perfect. And that's exactly what we've seen with Christine Noem, that within minutes or seconds of these instances happening, she takes the social media to call these people domestic terrorists when in every single instance that we've seen so far, there's been video unearthed that shows that in many cases the officers have lied. And I think it's obviously a huge disservice to our nation. But when the people can't trust their government, that is a sign of a backslide in democracy. And it's part of the reason why people like Christine Noem should not be in these positions anymore.

[00:05:57] Speaker 1: In the case of the men where they said they were attacked with an ambush, with a broom and a shovel, the Justice Department has dropped the charges. DHS says they're investigating these officers for lying under oath about this. They're facing potential criminal charges. If the administration said, well, look, this is how we corrected it. This is how we fixed it. What would you say to that?

[00:06:20] Speaker 5: I'd say it's not enough because we can't trust the administration to do this. We just can't trust them to investigate themselves because they've shown us time and time and again over the last over a year that they're not interested in justice and they're interested in covering their own asses every single point from the Epstein investigation to ICE and DHS and what's going on. And it's part of the reason why one of our demands, we have to have external investigations of all these instances because they're microcosm. They're examples of how really the entire department is completely flawed right now under the leadership of Christine Noem.

[00:06:55] Speaker 1: Who do you want to carry out those external investigations?

[00:07:00] Speaker 5: I think that this is not a normal time. And usually it is not for the United States Congress to go through every single thing. But I think especially in instances of some of these more high profile ones, I do think the United States Congress needs to open up investigations into some of these because again, they are examples and microcosms that really expand out to what we're seeing across the entire country right now. And so I do think the oversight committee would be a committee to do that.

[00:07:25] Speaker 1: Obviously, ICE funding and the Department of Homeland Security funding overall has become a huge sticking point on Capitol Hill. They have $75 billion for the next four years because of a bill legislation that's already passed. I think given that, some people might ask, how do you explain a vote that doesn't actually block that ICE funding because they already have it? It would block money to pay TSA agents, FEMA workers, Coast Guard members. I mean, obviously people that would be indirectly or directly affected, not intentionally so, but they would be directly affected by this. How would you justify your vote to those people?

[00:08:05] Speaker 5: Well, number one, the House of Representatives, the Republicans don't need my vote to pass a bill that they want to pass. If they want my vote, they're going to have to go with the demands that we put forth to help change what's going on with DHS and ICE. If we want to talk about consequences, Alex Pretty, Renee Nicole Good, people who are being shot and killed across this country and our neighbors who are being terrorized in our communities as we speak, those are the consequences of the recklessness of DHS and ICE right now. And House Democrats are using our power and the power of the purse to say enough is enough, that people have spoken. We see poll after poll that people say this administration have gone way too far as it relates to this, I don't call it mass deportation, it's a mass kidnapping campaign of our own neighbors. And so we're representing our constituents by saying, no, we know that through the big, beautiful bill that they passed to give ICE essentially unlimited amounts of resources and give huge tax breaks to billionaires at the cost of healthcare for working people. We know they did that last year, but what we're saying is we're not going to give them a penny more to do what we've seen over the last year.