Anne Arundel County police for the first time publicly disputed the federal agency’s account of a violent Christmas Eve incident involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Glen Burnie, as a deadly shooting by ICE in Minneapolis renewed scrutiny.

County police released a statement Thursday that undercut a key detail of ICE’s version of what happened in Glen Burnie.

Federal officials had said two people in the country illegally were in a work van when immigration agents approached them in a residential court Dec. 24. ICE said the van tried to run the agents over and three agents opened fire on the vehicle, injuring the driver, Portuguese immigrant Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins. The passenger, ICE said, suffered whiplash.

But county police confirmed The Banner’s reporting that the second person injured in the encounter was already in ICE custody, in one of the agency’s vehicles, when he was hurt.

ICE has repeatedly doubled down on its original statement. The agency did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The revelation came as scores of Americans took to the streets Thursday evening to protest an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minnesota.

ICE offered similar accounts of what happened in each shooting. After the shootings in Glen Burnie and Minneapolis, federal officials claimed the people they shot used their vehicles as weapons, forcing agents, fearing for their lives, to fire in defense. That’s an explanation law enforcement has long used to justify shooting motorists.

But Minneapolis authorities immediately challenged ICE’s account, citing video of the shooting that appeared to undercut the federal agency’s claims.

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman said in a statement Thursday he was “sickened, sickened, not only by the actions of the ICE officer on the video in Minneapolis, but also by the lies told by Homeland Security and President Trump in the aftermath.”

“This is the United States of America. We believe in justice, and justice depends on truth,” the Democrat said. “The fact that federal authorities lied about what happened in front of the cameras in Minneapolis makes all of us question what happened in the absence of cameras here in Glen Burnie.”

In a statement, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said ICE’s word under President Donald Trump could not be trusted.

“That’s why it’s critical that Maryland fully investigate what happened in Glen Burnie — especially given conflicting accounts," Van Hollen said.

Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Wes Moore, said in a statement that the Democratic governor supports local authorities’ review of the Glen Burnie shooting “to ensure a fair and transparent outcome.”

Pittman pledged the day of the Glen Burnie incident that police would investigate “it as we do all shootings in our county.”

Officials in Minnesota also promised a thorough investigation, only to report Thursday that the federal government was preventing local law enforcement from doing that.

In response to questions, Anne Arundel County police spokesperson Justin Mulcahy said detectives had interviewed Sousa-Martins and Salvadoran immigrant Salomon Antonio Serrano-Esquivel, the other person injured in Glen Burnie — potentially the only witnesses to the encounter who do not work for ICE.

After being released from the hospital, both immigrants, who federal officials said were in the country illegally, were transferred to ICE detention facilities.

Pittman noted in a text message that the investigation by county investigators is ongoing.

“They did not get the same intervention that has happened in Minneapolis,” he said of the federal resistance to the investigation there.

Questions around the Glen Burnie shooting center on Serrano-Esquivel.

ICE said the Salvadoran was a passenger in the work van being driven by Sousa-Martins and that he suffered whiplash when the van crashed into a tree following the shooting.

But an attorney speaking for Serrano-Esquivel told The Banner that ICE arrested Serrano-Esquivel hours before the shooting in Southern Maryland and he was injured while handcuffed in the back of an ICE vehicle.

Mulcahy confirmed Thursday that Serrano-Esquivel was in an ICE vehicle in the agency’s custody when he was injured.

Photos of the crashed work van posted online by ICE appeared to show a bullet hole on the passenger’s side of the windshield. And a bystander’s video of the aftermath reviewed by The Banner showed several agents running to the driver’s side door of the van and pulling out a man, who was taken away on a stretcher. There was no indication of a passenger in the video.

If ICE was driving around with Serrano-Esquivel handcuffed, looking for other people to arrest, that would appear to run afoul of commonly accepted law enforcement practices, said Ashley Heiberger, a retired police captain from Pennsylvania who is frequently retained as a law enforcement practices expert.

“Once the individuals are in custody, the focus is getting them safely to the destination, which generally precludes officers becoming involved in other matters while en route,” Heiberger said. “Officers are still responsible for the safety of the person arrested, and opportunities for escape should be minimized.”

Police and federal agents may operate by different rules. ICE has not responded to requests about its rules for transporting detainees.

Some officials said both incidents raise concerns about ICE agent training amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement push. Congress recently voted to triple ICE’s budget, and the agency is recruiting aggressively to bolster its ranks.

U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth, a Democrat who represents Anne Arundel and Howard counties, decried both ICE shootings in an X post Wednesday, saying Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “have weaponized ICE to instill fear, division, and terrorize immigrant communities.”

“The rush to hire and deploy agents has raised real doubts surrounding the integrity and quality of their trainings — resulting in these incidents in our neighborhoods and the further erosion of public trust,” Elfreth said. “The initial reports from today are deeply disturbing, which is why we need full transparency and accountability.”

It’s well established within law enforcement that officers should be cautious when approaching vehicles, Heiberger said.

“Police academy training has long emphasized not attempting to enter moving vehicles, nor placing yourself in their path,” Heiberger said. “Trying to get into the vehicle increases the chances of being dragged, and being in the vehicle’s path makes being struck more likely.”

According to The New York Times, a 2018 Department of Homeland Security use-of-force policy bars officers “from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle, vessel, aircraft or other conveyance unless the use of deadly force against the operator is justified.”

Having reviewed videos of the shooting in Minnesota, Jason Houser, chief of staff at ICE under President Joe Biden from 2021-23, said he can’t imagine how the agent’s actions were justified.

“Firing into a car in that way, where the person taking the video was clearly behind the car, puts civilians at risk and the other officers who were within 3 to 5 feet,” Houser said in an interview.

Houser and Scott Shuchart, who was a high-ranking political appointee at ICE under Biden, said many of ICE’s mishaps are attributable to a change in strategy under Trump — one that forced agents into a type of enforcement they are unaccustomed to.

“The standard used to be ‘spend your time going after people you already know about and you know are dangerous.’ And the new standard is: ‘Get the people who are easiest to get,’” Shuchart said. “They are optimizing for numbers, not for dangerousness.”

Houser believes the sea change is making communities less safe, both for the agents and for the public.

“ICE officers are standing on suburban street corners arresting and shooting,” Houser said. “Who are they not going after? They’re not going after the drug traffickers. They’re not going after sex offenders.”

That angers County Councilwoman Allison Pickard, a Glen Burnie Democrat.

“It’s not acceptable to me,” Pickard said. “The environment that’s been created is not acceptable to me when we’re talking about productive residents of our cities and states that have been living and paying taxes peacefully in our country and, yes, maybe they’ve overstayed a visa. I think the tactics that are being deployed are contrary to who we are as Americans.”