Christian Castro walked out of a detention center in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday after a federal judge refused to order his immediate return to Minnesota. He was freed at the end of a 90-day hold, and the release ended for now a detention that had kept him in Texas while Minnesota pressed to bring him back.
Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Prosecutors say he fired a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home and shot Sosa-Celis in the leg, then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. Authorities arrested Castro in Cameron County on May 29 after a Minnesota judge issued a nationwide warrant in May.
That is why his release mattered on Thursday. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked last week for a temporary restraining order to block Castro's release or force his return to Minnesota, warning that he could flee to Mexico if he got out. But U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. said on Wednesday that he could not stop a county sheriff from releasing Castro or order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign the extradition warrant because the case was not ripe for adjudication.
The judge's ruling left Minnesota with the outcome it feared most and without the immediate order it wanted. Texas attorneys argued on Tuesday that the court could not rule on a decision that was still pending, and Abbott had not denied extradition while waiting for the outcome of an internal state investigation into whether Castro was legally a fugitive under the Extradition Clause. Rodriguez wrote that Minnesota could not base its claims on the allegation that Abbott may violate those authorities in the future; it had to show a violation had already happened.
For now, Castro remains free in Texas because the 90-day clock ran out before any extradition order was enforced. What happens next turns on the state investigation and Abbott's decision, which will determine whether Castro stays in Texas, is sent to Mexico, or faces a later extradition fight from Minnesota.
