In this press release, DHS is using political shorthand. “Released into the country by President Joe Biden in 2022” does not mean the president personally released Julio Cesar Sosa‑Celis. It refers to the fact that he crossed the border without authorization in August 2022, was taken into federal custody, and then was not kept in long‑term immigration detention. Instead, like many recent border crossers, he was processed under immigration law (e.g., given a Notice to Appear for immigration court and/or paroled or released under “alternatives to detention”) and allowed to live in the U.S. while his immigration case proceeded. DHS has not publicly specified exactly which release mechanism was used in his case; the phrase simply ties that discretionary release to the Biden administration’s broader border policies.
An ICE detainer (Form I‑247A) is a written request from ICE to a state or local jail asking two things: (1) advance notice of when a person will be released, and (2) that the jail hold the person up to 48 hours longer so ICE can take them into immigration custody. It is not a criminal warrant and does not itself provide independent legal authority to arrest or continue holding someone.
Minnesota authorities might release someone before ICE can lodge a detainer because:
Being labeled a “non‑enforcement priority” means DHS/ICE has determined that, under its civil immigration enforcement guidance, a particular person is not among the categories that officers are directed to actively seek out for arrest and removal (for example, not currently viewed as a serious threat to national security, public safety, or border security). Such people can still be arrested or removed, but they are lower priority for limited enforcement resources.
The determination is made inside DHS, primarily by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers and their supervisors, applying nationwide guidance issued by the DHS Secretary (under the Biden administration, the key document was Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s September 30, 2021 memo, “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law”). That memo sets the main priority categories and instructs officers to make case‑by‑case discretionary assessments using factors such as criminal history, length of time in the U.S., and family and community ties.
As of the DHS press release, specific charging documents had not been made public, but based on the described conduct (ambushing and beating a federal officer with a shovel and broom handle during an arrest attempt), the three men are likely to face at least the following types of charges:
Federal charges (most likely):
State charges (possible in Minnesota):
At time of writing, publicly available reporting focuses on the incident and investigation; it does not show detailed charging documents, so the precise list and level of charges remain unconfirmed.
A “targeted enforcement operation” is an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) action where officers go out to locate and arrest specific people already identified in ICE systems, rather than conducting broad sweeps.
In practice:
In the Minneapolis case, DHS says Sosa‑Celis “was the subject of a targeted enforcement operation,” meaning he was one of those specifically chosen targets.
DHS’s claim of a “more than 1,300% increase in assaults” on ICE/federal officers comes from a DHS press release on January 8, 2026. DHS there compares:
and describes this as a 1,347% increase in assaults. That same release is the source for the related statistics on vehicular attacks and death threats, and the January 15 Minneapolis incident press release repeats the “more than 1,300%” wording without adding new data.
Yes. There are independent and local investigations underway into the ambush and the ICE officer’s use of force, and local leaders are at least partially cooperating while also contesting federal operations overall.
Available reporting and official statements indicate:
As of now, there is no public confirmation that an entirely independent civilian review body is in charge; investigations appear to be a combination of federal (DOJ/FBI), state (BCA), and local prosecutorial reviews, with some jurisdictional friction.