FBI says it has found no video of Border Patrol agent shooting 2 people in Oregon

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By CLAIRE RUSH

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.

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Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The truck then pulled forward, and the agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.

The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not specify if the agent who fired the shots was among them.

The shooting, which came one day after a federal agent shot and killed a driver in Minneapolis, prompted protests over federal agents’ aggressive tactics during immigration enforcement operations. The Department of Homeland Security has said the two people in the truck entered the U.S. illegally and were affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.

The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.

During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle. An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for him. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.

His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuela nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang.

Law enforcement officials work the scene following reports that federal immigration officers shot and wounded people in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”

Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, who represents Nino-Moncada, did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the federal shooting of and the subsequent accusations against Nino-Moncada and his passenger follow “a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”

Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.

Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.

New video shows the minutes before immigration officer fatally shoots woman in Minneapolis

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By JESSE BEDAYN

A new video shows more of what happened before a federal immigration officer shot and killed a woman during an enforcement operation in Minneapolis, adding context to a shooting that has sparked national debate on whether the officer acted in self-defense or recklessly.

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The video, which is 3 1/2 minutes long and was filmed by a bystander, was posted Sunday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on X. It shows federal officers and vehicles on a snowy street as a car horn blares on and off, with the sounds of whistles adding to the cacophony.

The camera swings to the left, showing a red SUV sitting perpendicular and blocking part of the road, the woman inside, Renee Good, pressing the horn repeatedly. After over a minute, Good pulled the SUV back slightly, unblocking part of the road and appears to wave at cars to pass. Two vehicles drive past her down the street.

Good’s wife is seen outside the red SUV, but the video doesn’t clearly show where she was in the proceeding minutes. Then, after a blare from sirens, a dark truck with a small flashing light pulls to a stop a few feet from Good’s SUV. Two officers exit the truck and walk toward Good’s car just before the video goes dark.

Bystander videos released last week, shot from multiple angles, show what happened next.

A video filmed by the officer who fired at Good shows one officer ask Good to get out of the car and another tries to open her door. The officer who is filming circles around to the front of the vehicle.

Good reverses briefly, which places the officer who is filming in front of the driver’s side of the vehicle. Good then turns the steering wheel toward the passenger side as the officer on the driver’s side says again, “get out of the car.” Almost simultaneously, her wife, standing on the passenger side and trying to open the door, shouts, “drive, baby, drive!”

The video veers up toward the sky and gunshots are heard.

Other footage of the shooting shows the officer who fired holstering his gun, then a few seconds of silence before Good’s SUV crashes into a parked car.

A woman who appears to be Good’s wife runs toward the crash, as the officer who fired walks in the same direction. Bystanders begin screaming.

Court says Trump administration illegally blocked $7.6B in clean energy grants to Democratic states

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By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

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The grants supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, including battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and efforts to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

The Energy Department said the projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration’s action violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.

“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote in a 17-page opinion. The administration offered no explanation for how their purposeful targeting of grant recipients based on their electoral support — or lack of it — for Trump “rationally advances their stated government interest,” the judge added.

The ruling was the second legal setback for the administration’s rollback of clean energy program in a matter of hours. A federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.

A spokesman for the Energy Department said officials disagree with the judge’s decision on clean energy grants.

Officials “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars,” spokesman Ben Dietderich said. “The American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”

Projects were canceled in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported Harris.

The cuts include up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production, and up to $1 billion for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest. A Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were spared, according to clean-energy supporters who obtained a list of the DOE targets.

The city of St. Paul and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit after they lost grants.

Trump said in an interview with One America News, a conservative outlet, last fall that his administration could cut projects that Democrats want. “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that,” Trump said in the Oct. 1 interview.

Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that filed the suit, said the court ruling “recognized that the Trump Department of Energy vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration, in violation of the bedrock Constitutional guarantee that all people in all states have equal protection under the law.”

The administration’s actions violated the Constitution, foundational American values and “imposed high costs on the American people who rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for healthier lives,” Patton said.

Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the groups that lost funding, said the court ruling would help keep clean energy affordable and create jobs.

“Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that possible,” she said.

4-year prison term for Minneapolis man who shot at vehicles during separate St. Paul road rage incidents

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A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to four years in prison for shooting a gun at other motorists in two separate road rage incidents in St. Paul, including one that involved another vehicle with children inside.

James Allen Ameer Smith (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

James Allen Ameer Smith, 24, received his sentence Friday in Ramsey County District Court in connection with the 2024 incidents.

Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of drive-by shooting, and the prosecution agreed to seek no more than 50 months in prison as part of a plea agreement. Four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon were dismissed at sentencing. Smith also received credit for 407 days he served in custody.

Smith has an open case in Dakota County that alleges he waved a gun at an Eagan motorist the day before he was arrested in the St. Paul shootings.

According to the criminal complaints:

A man reported that Oct. 12, 2024, while in his Jeep with two children, his vehicle was struck by a bullet on Summit Avenue near Lexington Parkway.

He said the driver of a black sedan was tailgating his Jeep and that when he tapped his brakes, the sedan accelerated and passed him, driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Then the sedan’s driver suddenly came to a near stop near the Governor’s Residence on Summit. The Jeep driver passed the sedan, but then that driver again went into the oncoming traffic lane to pass the Jeep.

As they neared Dale Street, the sedan braked hard and came to a stop. Again, the Jeep passed the sedan. As it did, the car’s driver fired a gun and a bullet struck the Jeep. The Jeep driver sped away.

No one was injured by his two children — ages 6 and 9 — were in the vehicle when it was hit.

Investigators found a bullet hole in the front passenger door of the Jeep and saw where the bullet had grazed and made contact with the center console. Surveillance video near the Governor’s Residence captured part of the incident.

Just over a month later, on Nov. 14, another driver, a 33-year-old man, reported a road rage incident to St. Paul police, saying he had been shot at by another driver and that his car had been hit by a bullet.

The man said he was driving south on Snelling Avenue near Selby Avenue when a man driving a black Nissan began tailgating him. The driver “brake checked the Nissan to get the other car to back off,” according to the complaint.

When the driver turned east onto Selby, the Nissan driver pulled up beside him, rolled down his window, fired a gun and then sped away. The driver followed the Nissan while calling 911 and reporting the Nissan’s license plate number.

Officers saw a bullet hole in the front driver’s side fender.

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Smith was arrested two weeks later in St. Louis Park. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing an empty gun holster.

While serving a search warrant, officers found a spent bullet casing on the driver’s side floor, three live rounds of ammunition in the center console, a live round of ammunition on the floor behind the driver’s seat and a loaded Glock handgun beneath the front passenger’s seat.

Smith told authorities he didn’t recall a road rage incident with a Jeep but, “If they are saying it’s my car then I guess it happened.”

He further said,  “I hate driving — all it has caused me is problems — tickets at least for speeding.”

When Smith was told the driver of the Jeep was shot at, he asked, “Is he OK?” When told that there were children in the Jeep, Smith also asked if they were OK.