A family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was forced to rush their 6-month-old baby and two young children to the hospital on Wednesday night after police forces doused a residential neighborhood in tear gas following the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa Celis by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The shooting prompted an instant protest by local community members that lasted well past 2:00 a.m. local time.
Shawn Jackson told local reporters that he, his wife Destiny and their six children were trying to drive home following their oldest child’s basketball game when they came upon the protest. Destiny said she saw her mother at the protest and tried to convince her to leave. Once they decided to go, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded the vehicle and began harassing the family.
Destiny said ICE agents were telling her to “Get the f*ck out of here,” to which she replied they would as soon as the ICE agents let them. “We know what happened when Renee tried to move. You guys said that she hit you when she didn’t,” Destiny recalled telling ICE agents during an interview with the local Fox News station.
After this, the ICE agents retaliated against the family by setting off a tear gas canister underneath the vehicle. Shawn Jackson said the force of the flash bangs caused the airbags in his vehicle to deploy. “Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car,” he said. He added, “My six-month-old can’t even breathe.” Pointing to the baby’s car seat, he said, “This was flipped over.
“I got three kids with asthma and my car is filled up with smoke.”
He said local police did not try to assist the family as they were being inundated with chemical munitions and trying to escape.
“[The police] still rushing me with paintball guns and all that,” Jackson continued. “I’m telling the officer to call an ambulance, he’s telling me to get back on the phone with [emergency services], tell them to come down Lyndale [Avenue]. They come down Lyndale they are going to get stopped right here. It makes no sense when they are the only ones that can call for backup and make them come down faster.
“I literally sat here with the officer for five minutes telling him my newborn can’t breathe and he’s telling me to call [emergency services] back,” Jackson said.
In the interview with Fox 9, Jackson’s wife Destiny said she was forced to perform CPR on her baby after the infant lost consciousness and stopped breathing. Her other children were assisted by protesters who provided water and milk to help soothe their stinging eyes, nostrils and skin. Eventually, three of the six children were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. All of the children are between the ages of six months and 11 years old.
Destiny said the family has never participated in a protest, but that will change following Thursday’s attack. “My kids were innocent, I was innocent, my husband was innocent, this shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “We were just trying to go home.”
The catalyst for the protest in North Minneapolis was the latest shooting by a DHS thug that left one man, identified by the agency as Julio Cesar Sosa Celis, wounded in the leg. DHS claimed their agent fired a “defensive shot” at Sosa Celis after the agent was attacked by two other people allegedly armed with a broom or shovel, who were trying to help Sosa Celis escape.
The two men DHS claims assaulted their officer were identified as Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma. It is unclear if either of the men knew Sosa Celis prior to yesterday.
Nothing the liars and fascists at DHS or in the Trump administration at large say should be taken at face value. Cell phone footage from inside the home of Sosa Celis has already revealed a contradiction in the narrative put forth by the government.
DHS claims their agent fired his weapon as he was being attacked, in an effort to stop the assault. However, cell phone footage from inside the home shows a woman, believed to be Sosa Celis’s wife or partner, telling emergency services that they shot him after he was already inside the home.
The woman told 911 operators that DHS agents were “chasing my husband for half an hour, trying to hit him.”
Once he got inside the home, that is when DHS agents shot him, she claimed: “He got home and when we closed the door they shot him.” If he was already inside the home, he obviously posed no danger to the DHS agent.
While on the phone with emergency services, Sosa Celis’s wife begged for protection from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs. “They are down outside the house, please we need help.”
Another woman is heard on the video softly crying while peering outside the window as red and blue lights flash. “Oh god, are they at the house?”
Sosa Celis’s wife tells the 911 operator again, “Right now they’re outside the house trying to get in.” Another woman reminds her to tell the operator that the agent “shot the door.”
In an interview with Sahan Journal, Christina Johnson, a nearby resident of the duplex where Sosa Celis and his family live, said she did not know the family well, only that “there’s a bunch of kids.”
Johnson said her house was flooded with chemical irritants used by ICE agents against protesters following the shooting. She said it “filled the whole house.”