MINNEAPOLIS — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty alleged Thursday that an ICE agent working in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge illegally pointed his gun at two motorists while he was driving to the Whipple Building at the end of his shift in February.

A nationwide warrant has been issued for Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., 35, of Temple Hills, Maryland, after he was charged with two felony counts of second-degree assault in Hennepin County District Court.

This is the first criminal charge to be levied against a federal agent for actions during Operation Metro Surge. Moriarty said in an interview with The Minnesota Star Tribune this week that while she can’t be certain, it might be the first charge nationwide stemming from conduct while on duty.

Messages were left with the White House and Department of Homeland Security seeking comment on the charges.

While her office continues to pursue evidence from the Trump administration over the shootings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Julio Sosa-Celis — along with several other incidents involving the actions of federal agents during the surge — Moriarty said the charging decision in this case was more straightforward because the Minnesota State Patrol was able to conduct a complete investigation of the incident and submit a case file.

“This is the only case that we actually know what the federal officers say,” Moriarty said. “We have their statement. We have video. This difference is that it came to us just like any other case would have.”

That includes having access to the agent’s name, witness statements from the victims and cellphone footage and surveillance camera footage that showed several elements of what took place.

Moriarty said that while Morgan told the state trooper he believed the people he pointed his gun at while driving his SUV were agitators trying to impede him, the evidence contradicts him.

The State Patrol first turned over the case file as a standard incident of road rage that took place on Feb. 5. The charge alleges that Morgan was driving back to the Whipple Building at Fort Snelling in a black SUV at the end of his shift with another ICE agent in the back seat of the SUV.

The SUV was driving on the crosstown interchange at the southern edge of Minneapolis where Interstate 35 merges with Highway 62 heading east near an exit for Portland Avenue.

Another motorist was driving his white Cadillac with a female in the passenger seat on their way to the Mall of America. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. They saw a black SUV in the rearview mirror that was passing cars while driving on the shoulder of the road.

“Like some Minnesotans, he’s ticked off about this,” Moriarty said. “It’s one lane, right? So he moves over a little bit to impede. Classic Minnesotan.”

At a news conference Thursday, reporters asked Moriarty whether the victims’ brief move onto the shoulder of the road could complicate the prosecution.

“Would I say that’s a good idea? No. Is it maybe a petty misdemeanor or something like that? Maybe. We are not concerned about what they did, knowing that they were already back in their legal lane,“ Moriarty said. “There was nothing that they did that justified what Mr. Morgan did.”

Moriarty said the alleged assault occurred after the victims had already returned to the legal lane, when Morgan’s SUV pulled alongside them while driving illegally on the shoulder and he pointed a gun at the occupants of the vehicle. Prosecutors say that conduct forms the basis of the second-degree assault charges.

When the Cadillac moved back into its lane, the SUV pulled up alongside it. Moriarty said at that time Morgan, who was driving, rolled down his window and “points a gun at their heads.”

“They’re both terrified,” Moriarty said.

“Policy here would consider that some type of use of force,” she continued. “You can’t just point your gun.”

The passenger in the Cadillac recorded the license plate on the SUV and called 911.

Both cars then happened to take the same exit. The passenger in the Cadillac began to cry out of fear and they left the area. The federal agents went to Whipple.

The state patrol trooper began investigating the 911 call and tracked the plates on the SUV to Budget Rent a Car. An employee there referred the trooper to Budget’s security division.

“He starts to realize this is federal agents,” Moriarty said. “This is ICE.”

The trooper called his lieutenant, who was at Whipple, gave him the license plate and asked him to look for the SUV. It was in the parking lot. The trooper interviewed the ICE agents with his body camera recording.

“They said they are driving along on their way to Whipple at the end of their shift,” Moriarty said of the recording. “They are unfamiliar (with the road) and they believe they are in a lane and somebody tries to cut them off. They claim that this person in the Cadillac knows that they are federal agents and they are harassing them like they always get harassed.”

At that point the agent said he took out his gun, while he didn’t admit he pointed it, the two victims in the car said the gun was drawn and pointed at them.

Both ICE agents claimed that the Cadillac was agitating them, so they yelled “Police!” The driver and passenger in the Cadillac said they never heard the agents yell anything and their window were rolled up. Both victims told investigators they had no idea the SUV was being driven by a federal agent.

The criminal complaint alleges that the ICE agent in the back seat claimed that by the time the SUV was alongside the Cadillac, Morgan “already had the firearm with the window down.”

Morgan’s supervisor, an assistant field-office director for ICE, told investigators that neither agent reported the incident.

Moriarty said it would not have been possible for the Cadillac to know the SUV was being driven by a federal agent given that it was unmarked and coming up from behind them.

It is unclear if there will be grounds for Morgan to try to remove this case from Hennepin County District Court to the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, but Moriarty said her office has become familiar with all of the possible legal maneuvers that could come in the wake of this charging decision.

Any criminal charge pursued by state prosecutors against federal agents for their actions during the surge has the potential to create historic case law over the state rights to pursue criminal charges and federal immunity from state prosecution granted under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Trump administration stridently argued in the early stages of the surge that federal agents in Minnesota carrying out immigration enforcement had total immunity from criminal prosecution because of that clause. Legal scholars have largely rejected that argument, but what criminal liability federal agents could be exposed to remains uncertain.

To date, the normal process of state law enforcement obtaining evidence in potential crimes or use of force incidents by federal agents has been unsuccessful.

Last month, Moriarty, along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans, sued the Trump administration for evidence from the shootings of Good, Pretti and Sosa-Celis.

Earlier this month, a U.S. District Court judge in Minnesota ordered the federal government to release troves of unredacted investigative materials from the killing of Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. That order stemmed from an assault case after Ross was dragged several hundred feet by a car while trying to execute an immigration arrest last year in Bloomington.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that several ICE agents had been arrested in recent months, largely for conduct while off-duty, including DUI and domestic assault. An ICE agent operating in Illinois was charged by a local police department with misdemeanor battery for scuffling with an immigrant rights activist.

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(Sofia Barnett of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.)

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