Christian J. Castro was arrested in Texas on Friday morning, a new turn in a Minnesota case that already cost him his job and brought state assault charges over a January shooting that wounded a Venezuelan immigrant. Investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tracked him to Harlingen, near the border with Mexico, and booked him into jail in Cameron County.
The arrest matters now because Castro, a federal immigration officer, is the central figure in a prosecution that has shadowed Minnesota’s immigration crackdown for months. The Hennepin County attorney’s office charged him this month with four counts of second-degree assault and a false police report charge, putting fresh pressure on a case that has drawn anger far beyond the courtroom.
On Jan. 14, Castro had been trying to arrest Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan migrant, when a brief scuffle followed a car chase. After Aljorna broke free and ran into a Minneapolis home, Castro fired a bullet through the front door. It struck Julio C. Sosa-Celis in the leg, turning a law-enforcement encounter into a shooting that set off violent protests during the height of the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minnesota that winter.
Castro told investigators he fired because he feared for his life as three men bludgeoned him with a shovel and a broom. Federal prosecutors then charged Aljorna and Sosa-Celis with assaulting a law enforcement officer based on that account, but later dropped those charges after reviewing Minneapolis police surveillance footage that contradicted it. That contradiction is the heart of why the case keeps widening: the version that justified the arrest operation did not survive the video.
Castro was placed on leave in February, and ICE’s interim director, Todd Lyons, said he was under investigation for appearing to have lied under oath. ICE officials have called the state charges unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt, while state prosecutors have said federal officials enjoy broad immunity for conduct in the line of duty. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the arrest was a critical step forward in the prosecution, but the bigger question now is whether Castro will waive extradition and be sent quickly to Minnesota, or force Gov. Tim Walz to seek his return from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
