MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota county 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 the state.
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, 52, shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man to the Minneapolis 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.
Castro fired from the yard through the home’s front door knowing there were people who had just run inside, she said.
“The bullet traveled through the door and struck Mr. Sosa-Celis’s leg before making its final impact in the wall of a child’s room,” the prosecutor said.
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 ICE and the Justice Department opened a joint 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.
One of several cases being investigated
The Trump administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Donald Trump’s national deportation campaign and considered Operation Metro Surge 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 sparked mass unrest and raised questions about officers’ conduct.
Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over which has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct, with the administration suggesting 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 investigating multiple incidents that occurred 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 is also investigating Good’s and Pretti’s killings and sued the administration in March to gain 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 doesn’t bring charges.
Video captured the Sosa-Celis incident
Minneapolis last month released video of the incident involving Sosa-Celis, captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.
The video appears to show a person standing with a snow shovel outside the house, near the street, then retreating toward the house and tossing the shovel into the yard. This happens as a person being chased by another person runs up from the street, falls on the sidewalk, gets up, and keeps heading toward the house.
The three appear to scuffle near the front steps for about 10 seconds. The exact moment when Sosa-Celis is shot isn’t clear. A car with flashing lights pulls up, and another person walks up.
The cases against Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were dropped after a highly unusual motion from the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, who said “newly discovered evidence” was “materially inconsistent with the allegations” that were made in the criminal complaint and with evidence presented at a hearing at their preliminary hearing. He said dismissal with prejudice, which meant the charges couldn’t be refiled, “would serve the interests of justice.”
Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.