The New York Times reports:

When an immigration agent shot Julio C. Sosa-Celis in the leg last month in Minneapolis, touching off hours of tense protests, the Trump administration rushed to sell a version of events that demonized the wounded man and defended the agent.

About two hours after the gunfire, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman claimed that three people had attacked an agent with a broom and snow shovel. She said the agent “fired a defensive shot to defend his life” as he was “being ambushed.” The next day, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused the men of trying to kill the agent.

But the federal government’s account soon shifted. And by Friday, it had fully unraveled.

When assault charges were filed days after the shooting against Mr. Sosa-Celis and one of the other men, Alfredo A. Aljorna, officials changed their narrative, saying it was not three people who attacked the agent, but two. Several other details revealed in court records also differed from the original account.

Then on Thursday, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota asked a judge to drop the case, saying that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations.” On Friday, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, said two agents had been placed on leave for providing accounts that appeared to conflict with video footage of what happened. Those agents, he said, could eventually face termination and prosecution.

“Lying under oath is a serious federal offense,” Mr. Lyons said in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is actively investigating these false statements.”

The collapse of the government’s narrative, which came just as the administration was ending its more than two-month surge of immigration agents to Minnesota, was the latest instance of the Department of Homeland Security providing an account of a shooting that later proved questionable or outright wrong. For many, especially those already skeptical of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, the repeated emergence of evidence that undermines official accounts has cast doubt on almost anything the government says about immigration enforcement. [Continue reading…]