Minnesota’s attorney general is suing the governor of Texas to force the extradition of a federal agent charged with shooting and wounding a man during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has refused to fulfil his “mandatory” obligation to transfer Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Christian Castro, so that he may stand trial. Castro’s case has become part of a national debate over transparency and excessive violence during Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The agent was involved in the January 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man living in Minnesota. Officials allege that Castro fired a gun into Sosa-Celis’s front door, striking him in the leg. Initially, the Trump administration said the agents had fired in self-defence, accusing Sosa-Celis and two other people of attacking officers with a broom and a snow shovel during an immigration enforcement operation.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went so far as to call the incident the “attempted murder” of an ICE agent. But video emerged contradicting the ICE agents’ testimony, and in February, federal prosecutors dropped the charges they had filed against Sosa-Celis and his housemate, Alfredo Aljorna. In a statement that month, ICE’s then-Acting Director Todd Lyons confirmed that Castro and a second ICE agent appeared to have lied about the incident.
The two officers were subsequently placed on administrative leave. In May, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Castro with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. But his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement.
Castro was arrested on May 29 in Texas, and he has remained in detention since. But Ellison has expressed concern that Texas officials – including Abbott, an ally of President Trump – could seek Castro’s release rather than have him face trial. The Minnesota attorney general described Castro as a flight risk, likely to flee across the US border to Mexico.
Under Texas law, Ellison said the 52-year-old Castro could be released from custody as soon as next week – 90 days after he was detained – if Abbott does not agree to his extradition. The Sosa-Celis shooting was one of several cases this year that prompted questions about the use of deadly force during immigration proceedings. The Minneapolis area was the subject of one of Trump’s most intense immigration enforcement campaigns, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.
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