ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota’s attorney general sued the governor of Texas on Tuesday, seeking to compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with wounding a man and then lying to justify the shooting during the agency’s crackdown in Minneapolis.
Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing ICE agent Christian Castro, and to order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant so that Minnesota officers can take custody.
Minnesota officials have clashed with the federal government over who has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct. Ellison is a Democrat and Abbott is a Republican ally of President Donald Trump.
Castro was arrested in Texas in May on Minnesota charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet that lodged in a child’s bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Minnesota officials fear ICE agent could flee
Ellison told a news conference that unless he’s extradited, Castro could be released from jail as early as next week — 90 days since he was detained — under Texas law. And if he’s freed, Castro could slip into Mexico from the border town where he’s being held, Ellison said. The lawsuit said Castro has been making calls from jail to a woman in Mexico, talking “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released.”
If Castro were to reach Mexico, “it may be difficult or impossible to locate and have him re-arrested,” with the process slowed further by a complex international extradition process that normally requires requests from the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a legal memo filed by Ellison’s office.
Complicating the situation, travelers face few difficulties crossing from the U.S. into Mexico. Pedestrian border crossings typically have no immigration checks for people leaving the U.S., and only occasional requests for passports on the Mexican side.
“Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota,” Ellison said. “He must face justice in Minnesota. Gov. Abbott should have granted Gov. Walz’s extradition request long ago and is required to do so now.”
Ellison’s office later said Castro could be freed as early as Aug. 26.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File
Abbott said Tuesday that he has no immediate intention to respond to extradition requests from Minnesota. He cited ongoing investigations of fraud in government social service programs in Minnesota, which Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there.
“I will not respond to them at all until they step up and do what’s right and they acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place,” Abbott said during a news conference on an unrelated topic in Austin, Texas.
Moriarty said that since Castro’s arrest, Texas has extradited three unrelated criminal defendants without incident to Minnesota.
“Gov. Abbott has received communication with us on an ongoing basis, including recently,” Ellison said. “We have to take the position that they are refusing to honor the extradition request.”
The lawsuit Ellison filed in U.S. District Court in Texas cites a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compliance with the Constitution’s extradition clause is mandatory, affording no discretion to the governor of a state where a defendant is being held.
Peter E. Larsen, an assistant professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, said Ellison’s argument was based on a “fairly straightforward legal principle” that requires states to hand over criminals, or accused criminals, to other states when they are asked.
Abbott’s rationale, tying the extradition to unconnected fraud cases, makes the Minnesota argument even clearer, he said.
“I don’t think that the courts (even the fairly partisan Roberts Court) would consider that as a legitimate basis for noncompliance with the extradition request,” he said in an email.
It was not immediately known if Castro had a lawyer who could speak for him. Online court records in Minnesota and county jail records in Texas did not list a defense attorney. The jail holding Castro declined to relay a message to him from The Associated Press.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the legal action to compel Castro’s extradition “should be a completely unnecessary lawsuit.” She said jail officials and prosecutors in Texas have been “very cooperative,” and that an extradition “is not supposed to be controversial.”
The office of Cameron County Sheriff Manny Trevino declined to comment Tuesday on the case.
AP Photo/John Locher, File
Federal agency has called agent’s prosecution a ‘political stunt’
Authorities say Sosa-Celis was shot after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were legally in the U.S., according to Minnesota officials.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer. A federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether agents lied about what happened.
Regardless, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called Moriarty’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction in the case.
The federal government took a similar stance following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during the Minneapolis enforcement surge. Moriarty sued the Trump administration to gain access to evidence in those cases before federal prosecutors turned it over last month.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis and Anna Wilder in Austin, Texas, contributed.