State and local prosecutors in Minnesota charged an ICE officer Thursday with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon.
The criminal charges appear to be the first against a federal immigration officer for actions allegedly taken while on duty during the immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.
"Today's charges reflect an important milestone in our efforts to seek accountability for the harms inflicted on our community during Operation Metro Surge," Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at a press conference on Thursday announcing the charges.
The officer is identified in the complaint as 35-year-old Gregory Donnell Morgan, Jr., a Maryland resident who was part of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division at the time of the incident and had been detailed to the Minneapolis area.
On the afternoon of Feb. 5, the Minnesota State Patrol received a 911 report that a driver in a Ford Expedition had pointed a gun at two people in another vehicle along a highway in the Twin Cities area.
According to the complaint, the two alleged victims told authorities that they had been stuck in traffic when they saw an unmarked black SUV coming up from behind, driving on the shoulder of a highway in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located.
The person driving says they briefly moved their car onto the road's shoulder in an effort to block the SUV's driver from bypassing traffic illegally and to "cut him off a little bit." Both alleged victims say they did not know the other driver was a federal officer.
The complaint states that Morgan then pulled up beside them, rolled down his window and pointed a black handgun directly at both the driver and the passenger and yelled something they couldn't discern. One victim told state law enforcement the encounter led them to believe there was a "crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people," the complaint says.
The victims called 911 and took a video showing the SUV's Utah license plate. State investigators used that license plate data to identify that the vehicle had been rented by another ICE officer – Morgan's partner who was also allegedly in the car at the time.
During a voluntary interview after the incident, Morgan told state authorities he was driving to the Federal Whipple Building, used as ICE headquarters during the Minnesota surge, at the end of his shift when the incident occurred.
According to the complaint, he told state law enforcement that he feared for his safety when the victims' car pulled in front of him, so he drew his gun and yelled "Police Stop." Morgan said he was trying to get the victims to back up.
There is a nationwide warrant for Morgan's arrest. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to NPR's request for comment. NPR was unable to reach Morgan for comment.
At Thursday's press conference, Moriarty acknowledged that the charges filed against Morgan were coming ahead of any possible charges in the cases of Alex Pretti and Renee Macklin Good, the two U.S. citizens shot and killed by federal immigration officers during the Minnesota ICE surge, or in the case of Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis who survived. All three were shot in January.
"I want to be transparent on why these situations are developing at different speeds," Moriarty said. "The state patrol was able to investigate thoroughly, identify Mr. Morgan and conduct an interview with him … Virtually none of the obstacles around evidence collection that exist for the January shootings exist in this case."
In late March, the state and Hennepin County sued the Trump administration, accusing it of withholding evidence and preventing them from investigating all three shootings.
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