State prosecutors are suing Texas’ governor over stalling an ICE agent's extradition back to Minnesota.
Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty say Texas Governor Greg Abbott has repeatedly ignored requests to transfer Officer Christian Castro. Ellison is asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing ICE agent Christian Castro, and to order Abbott to sign his extradition warrant so that Minnesota officers can take custody.
Moriarty says suits like this one are very unusual.
"Extradition is a routine administrative process," Moriarty explains. "It isn't about politics. It is the law."
Moriarty says they fast-tracked the federal complaint to block his potential release ahead of an approaching 90-day custody deadline. A federal judge will now decide whether Texas authorities must immediately transfer Castro or risk him escaping prosecution in Minnesota.
Castro was arrested in Texas in May on Minnesota charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet that lodged in a child’s bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
"Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Tuesday. "He must face justice in Minnesota. Governor Abbott should have granted Governor Walz's extradition request long ago and is required to do so now."
It was not immediately known if Castro had a lawyer who could speak for him. Online court records in Minnesota and county jail records in Texas did not list a defense attorney.
Abbott's office said in a statement that it would not comment on “pending extradition matters.”
The office of Cameron County Sheriff Manny Trevino declined to comment Tuesday on the case.
Authorities say Sosa-Celis was shot after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were legally in the U.S., according to Minnesota officials.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer. A federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether agents lied about what happened.
The lawsuit Ellison filed in U.S. District Court in Texas cites a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compliance with the Constitution’s extradition clause is mandatory, affording no discretion to the governor or courts of a state where a defendant is being held.
Moriarty said that since Castro’s arrest, Texas has extradited three unrelated criminal defendants without incident to Minnesota.
“Gov. Abbott has received communication with us on an ongoing basis, including recently,” Ellison said. “We have to take the position that they are refusing to honor the extradition request.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this story)
