BREAKING🚨 ICE agents shot a man 13 times, shattering his spine, then locked him up for eight months. A federal judge just ordered his release. Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, 31, had stopped at a Lowe's for supplies for an electrical job on December 24 when ICE agents in the parking lot spotted his white work van. They ran his tags, followed him into a residential neighborhood and boxed the van in. Agents smashed his window. He tried to drive off down a narrow path between two condo buildings. Three agents opened fire. His federal public defenders wrote that officers shot at him at least 13 times and struck him twice. The bullets damaged his spine and punctured a lung. One is still lodged in his back. His van crashed into a tree. ICE said its officers fired because they feared for their lives. There is no known video of the encounter. The agency also said a passenger in his van suffered whiplash, then changed its account after local police contradicted it: the other injured man, Salomon Antonio Serrano-Esquivel, had been arrested hours earlier and was sitting inside an ICE vehicle. Two ICE vans took a combined $17,000 in damage. The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldaris, at one point likened the whole thing to a "fender bender." In April, Sousa-Martins pleaded guilty to damaging government property, the resisting charge was dropped, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles D. Austin sentenced him to time served, saying the court had "some skepticism about some of what the government has presented." He stayed in immigration detention anyway. His attorneys said he was denied a breathing apparatus his doctors recommended, along with medication and bandage changes for his gunshot wounds. He has a 1-year-old learning to walk and a 4-year-old who was told his father was away on a work trip. CASA and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights filed the habeas petition that got him out. "Today, I can finally say I am free," Sousa-Martins said. "It was a long and difficult battle, but I'm here to tell you that it is possible. Please, don't ever lose hope. Don't give up."