MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 A federal immigration officer wanted for shooting a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration\u2019s Minnesota crackdown was arrested Friday in Texas, authorities said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hennepin County, Minnesota prosecutors said the state\u2019s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension located Castro, 52, in Texas and worked with agents from the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s Office and the Texas Rangers to arrest him.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro,\u201d Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said.<\/p>\n
Online court records do not list an attorney for Castro and it wasn\u2019t immediately clear if he has one. Messages seeking comment were left with ICE, the Homeland Security Inspector General\u2019s Office and the Texas Rangers.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, Castro fired through a home\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In a statement after the charges were announced, ICE said the U.S. attorney\u2019s office was investigating statements made by officers, who could face disciplinary action including being fired and prosecuted. ICE called the Hennepin County attorney\u2019s action \u201cunlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.\u201d DHS\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Minneapolis last month released video showing the moments before Sosa-Celis\u2019s shooting, captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The three appear to scuffle near the front steps for about 10 seconds. The exact moment when Sosa-Celis is shot isn\u2019t clear. A car with flashing lights pulls up, and another person walks up.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Donald Trump\u2019s national deportation campaign and considered Operation Metro Surge a success.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 conduct.<\/p>\n
Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over who has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct.<\/p>\n
Moriarty\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The county is also investigating Good\u2019s and Pretti\u2019s killings and sued the Trump administration in March to gain access to evidence in those cases and the Sosa-Celis shooting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 A federal immigration officer wanted for shooting a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration\u2019s 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 … Continue reading ICE officer wanted for shooting a man during the Minneapolis crackdown is arrested in Texas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1511209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-02 02:41:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1511209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511437,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511209\/revisions\/1511437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1511209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1511209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1511209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}