A maroon Hyundai Pilot SUV sits perpendicular across a residential road in Minneapolis. At the time, federal authorities were in the neighborhood as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recently announced surge of thousands of officials. A silver Nissan Titan drives up the road and stops because the Hyundai is blocking its path. Two officers dressed in body armor, pouches, and badges saying “police” exit the Nissan.

The two people walk towards the Hyundai. Someone can be heard saying “get out of the fucking car.” One of them tries to open the driver’s door and reach through the open window. The driver of the Hyundai reverses and turns, getting straighter with the road. The driver then slowly accelerates and starts to turn to the right, leveling the car out with its front pointing away from the two officers.

A third officer, who has been standing on the other side of the road, pulls out a firearm while the car is turning away from him and fires into the car three times. The officer fires two of the shots when the vehicle is already well past him. He is not in front of the car, but to the side. The officer calmly holsters his weapon.

The Hyundai, now straight on the road and its driver shot, rolls up the street and collides with a vehicle and electricity pole. The woman driver died. The driver's airbag is covered in blood.

You can watch three videos taken at the scene and posted to social media here, here, and here, to see if you think the above description is accurate.

The Trump administration is telling an entirely different story. A statement posted by the official DHS X account said, “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.”

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. Thankfully, the ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries,” it added.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said at a press conference, “it was an act of domestic terrorism” and “a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.” 

Trump posted a fourth video with his Truth Social post, which, again, you can watch here.

DHS lied. Trump lied. Noem lied. The Hyundai was already turning to the right away from the officers when the one who allegedly feared for his life fired the shots. There were no other officers up the road where the car did fully level out, meaning no other fellow officers were at risk. 

This is a pattern. Some event happens as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, DHS rushes out a misleading, wrong, or incendiary statement that does not reflect reality, and it becomes another piece of ammo for the X.com grifters, right wing media ecosystem, or people who just love the idea of others being hurt. DHS’s serial lying has become such a problem that even a judge called it out. In November, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis wrote a more than 200 page opinion that in large part catalogued DHS officials’ bullshit. Parts of the opinion were scathing: “The Court finds Defendants' evidence simply not credible.”

As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, highlighted at the time, Ellis was the first federal judge to review bodycam footage from DHS’s actions in Chicago. DHS claimed rioters had shot agents with fireworks; the explosions were DHS’s own equipment, according to bodycam and helicopter footage. Another series of bodycam clips showed DHS agents lobbed “flashbang grenades, tear gas, and pepper balls at the protesters, stating, ‘fuck yea!’.” And in an instance particularly relevant to Wednesday’s shooting, DHS shared a video the court believed was an attempt to show agents constantly face danger from cars ramming them on purpose. Instead, it “suggests that the agent drove erratically and brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that agents could then use as justifications for deploying force.”

Ellis also specifically found the testimony of Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino “not credible.” In one case, Bovino was shown a video of agents hitting Rev. Black with pepper balls. Bovino denied seeing a projectile hit Black in the head, Ellis wrote.

You can watch the video yourself, which Ellis provided a link to in her opinion, here. For what it’s worth, Bovino was, at some point, at the scene of Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis.

“Overall, after reviewing all the evidence, the Court finds that Defendants’ widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that Defendants say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening at the Broadview facility or out in the streets of the Chicagoland area during law enforcement activities,” Ellis wrote.

It has also become routine, unfortunately, for law enforcement to use passive voice and reflexively claim that an officer was acting in “self defense” after law enforcement shoots someone, regardless of the circumstances.

In September a man called Joshua Jahn opened fire on an ICE facility. Even then, ICE wasn't hurt: he killed two detainees and injured another.

But DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality. Its words carry no weight or meaning for those who care about what really happened. Only those who want to believe what it says.