MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota prosecutor on Monday announced charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minnesota.
The officer, Christian Castro, is charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at a news conference. A warrant was issued for his arrest.
“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” Moriarty said, adding that Sosa-Celis never posed a threat and that her office received no cooperation from the federal government. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes in this state or any other.”
Castro shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he and another officer chased a different man to the apartment duplex where the man and Sosa-Celis lived, Moriarty said, noting that both Sosa-Celis and the other man were legally in the U.S.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the incident. But a federal judge later dismissed the charges and federal officials opened an investigation into whether two immigration officers lied about what happened.
Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. DHS previously said that lying under oath is a “serious federal offense” and that making false statements could result in an officer being fired or prosecuted.
The administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Donald Trump's national deportation campaign. DHS, which oversees ICE, called Operation Metro Surge its largest immigration enforcement operation ever and deemed it a success.
But tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers provoked mass unrest and questions about officers' conduct.
Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over which has the authority to investigate and prosecute officers for conduct while on duty. The Trump administration has suggested that Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction.
State officials, though, have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself or hold officers accountable.
“There’s no modern precedent for what happened to the people here in Minnesota,” Moriarty said Monday. “So it requires a lot of us to dig in and look at ways to hold people accountable that we probably never thought we would be looking at in our careers.”
Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, has been conducting investigations into multiple incidents during the crackdown. Moriarty's office last month charged Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with two counts of second-degree assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car on a highway, but he is still at large. She said Monday that her office has made "substantial progress" in apprehending him.
The county continues to investigate Good's and Pretti’s killings and sued the administration in March over access to evidence in the two cases and the one involving Sosa-Celis. Although Moriarty hasn't charged anyone in either killing, she has said she's confident her office's investigations will bring transparency, even if not criminal prosecution.
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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
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