ICE agent Christian Castro was arrested in Minneapolis on Wednesday, months after Minnesota charged him with shooting a Venezuelan man through the door of a home and falsely reporting what happened.
Castro, 52, was taken into custody by Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents and booked into the Hennepin County Jail. He faces four felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime.
The arrest puts Castro before Minnesota prosecutors after a months-long fight to return him from Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott declined to approve Minnesota’s extradition request, and Castro spent about 90 days in a Texas jail before he was released in August.
The state case stems from a Jan. 14 encounter during Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration enforcement deployment in Minnesota. Prosecutors say Castro pursued a vehicle to a north Minneapolis home before a brief confrontation outside.
As the men went inside, Castro allegedly drew his service weapon and fired through the closing front door. The bullet struck 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg, continued through the home and stopped in the wall of a child’s bedroom. Children were inside at the time.
Investigators later focused on Castro’s account of the confrontation. He allegedly said men attacked him with a broom and snow shovel and described firing while he was partly on the ground.
Prosecutors say video and physical evidence conflicted with that version. The charges allege Castro was standing when he fired and that the confrontation unfolded over seconds.
Federal prosecutors initially charged Sosa-Celis and his roommate, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, with assaulting a federal officer. The Justice Department dismissed those cases in February after newly discovered evidence was found to be materially inconsistent with the allegations supporting the charges.
Castro now faces a second criminal case over what he allegedly told federal investigators.
A federal grand jury indicted him this month on six counts of making materially false statements to the FBI. The indictment accuses Castro of giving investigators false information about the alleged attack, how long the struggle lasted and his position when he fired.
One count alleges Castro told the FBI he believed he had been fighting with one of the men for about three minutes. Prosecutors say the interaction lasted approximately 11 seconds.
The federal indictment brought Castro back into custody in Texas shortly after his release in the extradition dispute. He later secured release on a $75,000 unsecured bond with GPS monitoring. The Department of Homeland Security has suspended him without pay.
His return to Minneapolis ends the immediate question of whether Texas would send him back to face the state charges. Abbott had questioned whether Castro qualified as a fugitive because federal immigration authorities returned him to Texas after the January shooting.
Minnesota sued Abbott over the stalled extradition, but a federal judge declined to order Castro’s immediate transfer. The extradition paperwork remained unsigned when Castro reached the end of his Texas detention period.
According to his attorney, Castro traveled to Minnesota intending to answer the charges and had coordinated a surrender with authorities. Minnesota officials disputed that characterization, saying BCA agents arrested him after locating him near his attorney’s office.
Castro is scheduled to make his first appearance in Hennepin County District Court on Thursday. He is expected in federal court in St. Paul on Friday in the separate false-statement case.
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