A US immigration agent was arrested in Texas on Friday, nearly two weeks after a Minnesota prosecutor charged him with attacking a Venezuelan man in a non-fatal shooting in Minneapolis this year.
Christian Castro, an agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime for shooting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg on Jan. 14, amid a wave of deportations in Minnesota in response to President Donald Trump’s aggressive and heated protests.
Investigators with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension found Castro in Texas and traveled there, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the chief state prosecutor in Minneapolis, said in a statement.
He was arrested by Texas Rangers and agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, which oversees ICE.
Sosa-Celis was shot during the chaotic weeks of Operation Metro Surge, in which hundreds of masked, armed agents roamed the streets of Minnesota’s largest cities searching for immigrants.
Earlier, two immigration agents had shot and killed American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis on separate days: Renee Good and Alex Pretty.
In each case, Trump and other administration officials defended federal agents and blamed the victims for the violence, angering many Minnesotans.
It is unusual for state prosecutors to charge federal law enforcement officers, but Castro is the second federal official to be charged by Moriarty’s office this year.
She is also suing the Trump administration over access to evidence in the murders of Good and Pretty and has said she is considering whether to prosecute the agents who killed them.
In the case of Sosa-Celis, DHS withdrew the details of its shooting after saying that the ICE agents involved had lied, and the Justice Department dropped the case against Sosa-Celis.
Two ICE officers, who were not named at the time, were placed on administrative leave and may face federal prosecution for false statements, according to DHS.
