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, fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived, Moriarty said, noting that both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were legally in the U.S.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the confrontation. 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.
In a statement, ICE said the U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating statements from officers, who could face disciplinary action including being fired and criminally prosecuted. ICE called the Hennepin County attorney’s action “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.”
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 who has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct, with the administration suggesting that state 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 confrontation
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 their preliminary hearing. He said dismissal with prejudice, which meant the charges couldn’t be refiled, “would serve the interests of justice.”
Minneapolis last month released video showing the moments before Sosa-Celis’s shooting, 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.
Castro fired from the yard through the home’s front door knowing there were people who had just run inside, Moriarty 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.”
She said her office would continue to prosecute the case even if Castro’s defense tries to move the case from state court to federal court. She also noted that a presidential pardon would not be possible for the state charges even if Castro were to be found guilty in a federal court.
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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.