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Minnesota’s Hennepin County’s top prosecutor announced Friday that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, who was indicted last week in the shooting death of a Venezuelan-born man during a deadly crackdown on immigrants launched by the Donald Trump administration.
Mary Moriarty in a statement posted on social media said that Christian Castro is in Texas this week and was arrested with the help of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and the Texas Rangers.
Castro was indicted 11 days ago on four counts of second-degree assault and one count of perjury in connection with the Jan. 14 of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
When Moriarty announced the charges last week, ICE called the action “unlawful and nothing more than political.” The DHS Office of Inspector General is separate from ICE and is designed to serve as a liaison to DHS agencies, including ICE.
Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun at the front door of the home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment where the two lived.
Both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were in the United States legally after arriving from Venezuela through the federal government’s Temporary Protected Status program, which the Trump administration wants to end in at least some cases.
Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of striking the officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the altercation. But a federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened a joint investigation into whether the two immigration officials lied about what happened.
“Today’s arrest is an important step in our prosecution of Mr. Castro,” Moriarty said in a statement. “The BCA investigation was instrumental in this process and we are grateful for their cooperation as we attempt to respond to this incident on behalf of Mr. Sosa-Celis, his family and our community.”
Last month, Moriarty sued ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., accusing him of pointing out the gunman in the February incident.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds approximately 60,000 people in detention facilities, most of whom have no criminal charges. Nationally, CBC’s Jonathan Montpetit goes to Texas where advocates say ICE arrests are being used as a tool to bully people out of the country and is hearing about the plight of former detainees — including a 16-year-old boy.
The incident that overshadowed the 2 fatal shootings
The incident involving Sosa-Celis, chronologically, comes amid separate shootings of two 37-year-old US citizens and protesters by government workers in Minnesota.
Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer on Jan. 7, and more than two weeks later, Alex Pretti died after being hit multiple times when two Customs and Border Patrol officers fired their weapons.
Trump administration officials have issued a scathing critique of Good and Pretti just hours after their deaths. Vice President JD Vance called Good a “victimized leftist,” and Kristi Noem — who has been replaced by Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary — said Good’s actions in his car before he was killed were an act of “domestic terrorism.”
Minnesota has sued DHS, alleging that federal officials denied state investigators access to information needed to conduct their own investigation into the murders of Good and Pretti.
During testimony Tuesday, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem refused to retract or apologize for her comments in January calling two US citizens shot and killed by immigration police in Minneapolis domestic terrorists. Accounts from local officials and bystander video contradict his comments. Noem’s hearing was interrupted at times by shouting protesters.
The Justice Department said the FBI was conducting a human rights investigation into Pretti’s murder, while CBP was conducting an internal investigation into the fatal incident.
However, Todd Blanche, now acting US attorney general, said in January that there was “no basis” for a human rights investigation into Good’s murder.
At a recent Capitol Hill committee meeting, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, criticized Blanche for launching an investigation into Good’s housemate, a move that reportedly led to several federal prosecutors resigning in protest.
Front burner30:09ICE, and studies from Minnesota
About 4,000 people were arrested in Minnesota
The federal government launched Operation Metro Surge in December, specifically targeting immigrants from Minnesota who were born in Somalia. The push comes after several Somali-Americans were indicted for fraud schemes run in the state.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border chief, said that since the operation ends in mid-February, about 4,000 people have been arrested. Although Homan prides himself on catching “the worst” violent criminals, another analysis found that a significant percentage of those rounded up had no criminal record in the country.
Democrats have accused the Trump administration and the Justice Department of misrepresenting some controversial incidents amid their impeachment efforts. Some judges even questioned the representations.
Last week, Chicago’s top prosecutor dropped the highly-anticipated case of four activists who protested outside a federal building during the city’s immigration crackdown last year, after a judge considered allegations of misconduct by the prosecutor’s office. The misconduct included the federal prosecutor’s meeting with the grand jury without due process.
