This one always seemed bogus to me but because there were no observers with cameras, we really didn’t know:
Immediately after a US border patrol agent shot two people in Oregon last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the targets were “vicious” gang members connected to a prior shooting and alleged they had “attempted to run over” officers with their vehicle.
In the weeks since, key parts of the federal government’s narrative have fallen apart.
The events took place on the afternoon of 8 January, one day after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
According to a DHS press release and social media posts issued the following day, border patrol agents were conducting a “targeted” stop of a vehicle in Portland occupied by two members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang. Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, a woman in the passenger seat, had been “involved” in a Portland shooting last year, the agency wrote.
During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, “weaponized their vehicle against” officers, DHS said, prompting an agent “to defend himself and others” by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.
But court records obtained by the Guardian reveal a Department of Justice prosecutor later directly contradicted DHS’s Tren de Aragua statements in court, telling a judge: “We’re not suggesting … [Niño-Moncada] is a gang member.” An FBI affidavit issued following the incident also suggests that in the previous shooting cited by DHS, Zambrano-Contreras was not a suspect, but rather a reported victim of a sexual assault and robbery. Neither Niño-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras have prior criminal convictions, their lawyers have said.
Immigration and criminal justice experts who reviewed the case records characterized the federal government’s communications as a “smear campaign” against the two Venezuelan immigrants, with mischaracterizations of their pasts and unsubstantiated allegations of criminality.
Niño-Moncada, the 33-year-old driver, who is undocumented, remains detained, facing charges of aggravated assault of an officer based on claims he tried to “intentionally” hit agents with his car. Zambrano-Contreras, 32, was not criminally charged, but has pleaded guilty to improper entry to the US, a misdemeanor. Prosecutors have said the two were dating.
[…]
“The federal government cannot be trusted. Our default position should be skepticism and understanding they lie very regularly,” said Sameer Kanal, a Portland city councilor. “There’s a playbook of demonizing people … and claiming vehicles were used as ‘weapons’. We see a pattern of victim-blaming, and it’s important we push back, because it’s propaganda.”
They shot at a car that was driving away. This is what they do. If you dare to defy them, they will kill you. It has nothing to do with self defense.
Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force.
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
This piece by Reuters looks at 6 different incidents in which it’s pretty clear that the DHS came out of the gate with a dishonest narrative. It includes Pretti and Good and four others. You literaly can’t believe anything they say.