Exclusive: Justice Department considers bringing charges against ICE officer in Minneapolis shooting
By Whitney Wild, Rob Kuznia, CNN
(CNN) — The Justice Department is considering whether to charge an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg this winter in Minneapolis, according to a source familiar with the deliberations and a DOJ spokeswoman.
Federal charges would mark a significant move for the Trump administration, which has vigorously resisted attempts to hold ICE officers accountable for other shootings.
The agent, Christian Castro, was arrested in May after state prosecutors in Minnesota filed charges against him for second-degree assault and falsely reporting a crime. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declined to extradite him to Minnesota.
The person familiar told CNN federal prosecutors could move forward as soon as Tuesday with charges. According to a lawsuit filed by the Minnesota attorney general seeking Castro’s extradition, Castro could be released from custody in Cameron County, Texas, as soon as Wednesday. The tight timeline puts pressure on both federal and state prosecutors to keep Castro in custody.
A federal judge in Texas will hold a hearing on Tuesday to consider Minnesota’s request that Abbott send Castro to Minnesota immediately. CNN has reached out to Castro’s lawyer for comment.
The Department of Justice told CNN that prosecutors have not decided whether to charge Castro federally. Bringing a federal case against the officer wouldn’t on it’s own stop the Minnesota case from proceeding simultaneously.
“As in any case where the conduct at issue may implicate a civil rights charge, U.S. Attorneys offices are required by DOJ policy to consult and work with the civil rights division because that division has the subject matter experts in this area of law,” Emily Covington, director of public affairs for the Justice Department, wrote in a email. “Any charging decisions that come out of such investigations are collaborative and deliberative and adhere to the facts and law of that specific case and controversy.”
Covington said officials in the civil rights division have held conversations with local prosecutors in Minnesota. It is not clear what, if anything, the Justice Department will ultimately charge. Covington described the conversations as a standard part of any on-going investigation.
Following the shooting in January, the Department of Homeland Security charged the injured man, Julio Sosa-Celis, and another man involved.
Weeks later, in a stunning reversal, the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to drop criminal charges against the two men. In it, the DOJ said federal prosecutors provided incorrect information to the court, while ICE issued a statement admitting its federal agents made “false statements” under oath.
The two federal agents involved have been placed on administrative leave while the Justice Department investigates their “untruthful statements,” which were revealed by a review of video evidence, ICE Director Todd Lyons previously said in a statement.
The chase and shooting
DHS officials in May criticized the state charges as a “political stunt,” saying “this is a federal issue, and it must be handled at the federal level.”
The statement went on to say that “lying under oath is a serious federal offense,” and that the agents could face termination and criminal prosecution.
The January 14 incident involving Castro unfolded during an explosive time in Minneapolis, one week after protester Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer, triggering a winter of violent clashes between protesters and federal immigration agents that intensified later that month, when protester Alex Pretti was fatally shot by agents.
The 52-year-old ICE agent allegedly shot 24-year-old Sosa-Celis in the back of the leg through the door of his apartment in Minneapolis.
The chaotic chain of events began earlier that night, when immigration agents tried to pull over a Ford belonging to an undocumented immigrant named Joffre Barrera. But behind the wheel was another man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna — a DoorDash driver and Sosa-Celis’ cousin — who led them on a chase.
Aljorna, then 26, crashed the car into a snowbank and made a dash for the nearby apartment complex where he and Sosa-Celis live with their families. The agents were in close pursuit, and when one of them slipped, they grabbed Aljorna and both men tumbled to the ground.
In the federal government’s initial account of the ensuing scuffle, federal agents were targeting Sosa-Celis in a traffic stop when he attempted to evade arrest, crashed into a parked car and tried to flee on foot.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed Sosa-Celis and one of the agents were in a “struggle on the ground” before Sosa-Celis “got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick,” at which point the officer fired a “defensive shot.”
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described the men’s actions as “an attempted murder of federal law enforcement.”
Sosa-Celis, then 24, and his cousin Aljorna were charged with assaulting an ICE officer. Sosa-Celis had entered the country in 2023; Aljorna, in 2021. Both were granted Temporary Protected Status in 2024.
DHS’ case unraveled in the weeks after the incident, with internal investigations, witness accounts and video footage revealing that much of the federal government’s original version of events was untrue.
For instance, the driver of the car was Aljorna, not Sosa-Celis — a fact acknowledged early on by the DOJ, which stuck to the account about the shovel and broom attacks. Then, in February, came another reversal: The feds dropped the charges, saying in a motion that federal prosecutors had provided incorrect information to the court.
Speaking to CNN that month, Sosa-Celis and his attorney said Aljorna was tackled by an ICE agent after running from the car, just 10 feet away from the apartment door, where Sosa-Celis had walked out and called for him to get inside.
Aljorna was able to slip out of his jacket, freeing himself from the agent’s grasp, and both men got behind the door and closed it when a shot rang out.
“I closed the door and as I was locking it, I heard the shot, and that’s when I realized I had been shot in the leg,” Sosa-Celis told CNN at the time during a Facebook livestream from a hospital.
On May 18, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office took the extraordinary step of pressing charges against the ICE officer, with support from state Attorney General Keith Ellison. Castro was arrested with the help of Texas Rangers on a warrant issued by a Minnesota court more than a week later in Cameron County, Texas, where he remains incarcerated.
Now, Minnesota’s Ellison and Texas’ Abbott are clashing over whether Texas will hand Castro over to Minnesota. Ellison has sued Abbott, demanding that Castro be extradited. Abbott responded Monday expressing “serious concerns” about the legality of Minnesota’s request, saying he doubts Castro is really a fugitive.
Instead, according to Abbott’s filing, Castro returned to Texas for his job obligations.
Minnesota is also asking Texas to keep Castro behind bars until his extradition. The 90-day prison limit for people awaiting extradition expires on Thursday.
Abbott has sought to connect the case to a political liability for Democrats in Minnesota: the wide-ranging social-services fraud in the state whose staggering dollar amounts range from a few hundred million dollars to $9 billion. That fraud — most of it managed by the state but funded by the feds — prompted Trump to launch Operation Metro Surge, one of the largest immigration crackdowns in modern history, in Minnesota.
This story was updated with additional reporting.
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