Christian Castro was arrested in Texas on Friday, moving a Minnesota shooting case against the ICE agent into the next phase after prosecutors charged him with shooting a Venezuelan man and lying under oath. The 52-year-old faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
The arrest gives new force to a case that began with a Jan. 14 ICE operation in Minneapolis targeting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Homeland Security officials said Sosa-Celis fled a traffic stop and ran into a home, where investigators say Castro fired through the front door without knowing several people had just entered. The bullet struck one victim in the leg and ended in a wall in a child’s room.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tracked Castro to Texas. Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General agents and Texas Rangers took him into custody, with BCA investigators present. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said, “Today’s arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro.”
The shooting is part of a larger dispute over what happened during the confrontation and what officers later told a court. Federal authorities accused Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna of assaulting an officer with a broom handle and snow shovel, but a federal judge dismissed those charges. That dismissal triggered an investigation into whether two ICE officers lied under oath, and court proceedings later showed the officers’ account differed sharply from the testimony of the two defendants and three eyewitnesses. Claims that an officer was hit with a broom and snow shovel were also not backed by available video.
Castro is now the second federal agent charged in Operation Metro Surge, the large-scale immigration enforcement effort in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that the Department of Homeland Security has called its biggest immigration operation to date. ICE Director Todd Lyons said both officers were placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation and warned that “Lying under oath is a serious federal offense.” The case now moves from the arrest scene in Texas to a prosecution that will test how much of the January operation can stand up under scrutiny.
