A federal immigration officer wanted for shooting a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s Minnesota crackdown was arrested Friday in Texas, authorities said.
Christian Castro, of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was taken into custody 11 days after Minneapolis prosecutors charged him with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Hennepin County, Minnesota prosecutors said the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension located Castro, 52, in Texas and worked with agents from the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's Office and the Texas Rangers to arrest him.
In exclusive interviews with WCCO Radio, both Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty welcomed the arrest Castro.
"We were expecting the arrest to happen, so we're grateful for all of the work that the BCA put in," noted Moriarty.
"You know, it was very important that accountability come to this situation," Ellison added.
Both of them acknowledged that federal authorities may attempt to move the case to federal court, but Ellison says Minnesota prosecutors would still retain control of the trial.
"That does not mean that Minnesota state prosecutors won't be in court prosecuting the case. It'll just mean that it's in a federal courtroom," Ellison explains.
Ellison and Moriarty also praised the law enforcement effort that led to the arrest Castro.
'Well, I was very grateful for the hard work of the agents of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They did a fantastic job," said Ellison.
Moriarty says this arrest is part of a larger fight against all of the crimes committed under Operation Metro Surge.
"We are investigating, I think, between 30 and 35 of those cases," says Moriarty. "We are continuing to analyze all of these cases. I can assure the public that we haven't forgotten any of these."
They are now waiting to see if the Castro will fight his return to Minnesota.
They're now awaiting Castro's extradition to Minnesota while continuing to pursue a separate legal fight to secure key evidence in the Alex Pretti and Renee Good cases.
No response from federal officials
Online court records do not list an attorney for Castro and it wasn't immediately clear if he has one. Messages seeking comment were left with ICE, the Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office and the Texas Rangers.
Castro is the second federal agent to be charged over their conduct during the Minnesota crackdown, which was known as Operation Metro Surge. He is one of two agents that ICE Director Todd Lyons said lied about the circumstances of the incident.
According to prosecutors, Castro fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh 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., Moriarty said.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. A federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether officers lied about what happened.
In a statement after the charges were announced, ICE said the U.S. attorney’s office was investigating statements made by officers, who could face disciplinary action including being fired and prosecuted. ICE called the Hennepin County attorney’s action “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.” DHS's Inspector General's Office, which Moriarty credited with assisting in the arrest, is separate from ICE and is meant to serve as a watchdog for DHS agencies, including ICE.
Minneapolis last month released video showing the moments before Sosa-Celis’s shooting, captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.
The video appears to show a person standing with a snow shovel outside the house, near the street, then retreating toward the house and tossing the shovel into the yard. This happens as a person being chased by another person runs up from the street, falls on the sidewalk, gets up, and keeps heading toward the house.
The three appear to scuffle near the front steps for about 10 seconds. The exact moment when Sosa-Celis is shot isn’t clear. A car with flashing lights pulls up, and another person walks up.
The Trump administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Donald Trump’s national deportation campaign and considered Operation Metro Surge a success.
But tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign, and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers sparked mass unrest and raised questions about officers’ conduct.
Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over who has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct.
Moriarty’s office last month charged immigration agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car on a highway. He turned himself in last week and his lawyer disputes the charges.
The county is also investigating Good’s and Pretti’s killings and sued the Trump administration in March to gain access to evidence in those cases and the Sosa-Celis shooting.
