Minnesota state agents arrested ICE officer Christian Castro in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday, eight months after he shot and injured a Venezuelan man through a door during an immigration enforcement operation in January.
Castro, 52, was booked into Hennepin County Jail on an outstanding warrant for assault and false reporting.
The agent is being held without bond for a state-court appearance and is due in federal court Friday on a separate indictment accusing him of lying to the FBI.
The shooting took place on January 14 in north Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities.
Castro chased a car driven by Alfredo Aljorna to a duplex.
Aljorna and roommate Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, 24, ran inside.
Castro fired through the front door.
The bullet hit Sosa-Celis in the leg.
Two days later, federal prosecutors charged Sosa-Celis and Aljorna with assaulting a federal officer based on Castro’s account that they had beaten him with a shovel and a broom.
City surveillance video contradicted that story, and prosecutors dropped the charges against the two men in February.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons later said sworn statements from two officers in the incident “appear to have made untruthful statements.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a Democrat, charged Castro in May with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” she said. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes in this state or any other.”
DHS called the state case “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt” and said only federal authorities have jurisdiction over an on-duty officer, according to a CNN report.
Castro is the second federal immigration agent Moriarty has charged from the surge. The first was Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., accused of pointing a gun at motorists on a highway shoulder.
Minnesota tried to extradite Castro from Texas after he was arrested there in May.
Gov. Greg Abbott did not sign the warrant.
Abbott’s office argued he was determining whether Castro was even a fugitive, because ICE had reassigned him to Texas rather than him fleeing the state.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz sued, and a federal judge sided with Abbott.
Later, a Minneapolis grand jury indicted Castro on six counts of making false statements to the FBI. The indictment says he claimed he was on his back when he fired, that multiple people attacked him, and that an 11-second scuffle was a three-minute fight.
Video and other evidence, prosecutors say, show he was alone in the front yard and under no physical attack when he shot through the door.
Castro then went back to Minnesota for the federal arraignment.
His state-court lawyer, Daniel Gerdts, said Castro had agreed to drive from Texas and surrender at the lawyer’s office Wednesday.
BCA agents arrested him on the street minutes before he arrived.
Moriarty issued a statement saying, “Gov. Abbott’s attempt to shield Mr. Castro from accountability has failed. We look forward to commencing our prosecution.”
Ad block users: Some site features may not work correctly while an ad blocker is enabled, because they break scripts and content this website depends on. If you can’t see comments below, for example, please disable your ad blocker.
Read the full article here
