ICE agent who faces charges in Minnesota shooting arrested in Texas

The top out public prosecutor from Minnesota's Hennepin County proclaimed fri that an in-migration and Customs Enforcement officer (ICE), charged last week for shooting a Venezuela-born man at the height of a deadly immigration blitz launched by the Donald Trump administration, has been arrested.

Mary Moriarty said in a statement posted on social media that Christian Castro was located in Texas this week and was subsequently arrested with the assistance of the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General and the Texas Rangers.

Castro was charged 11 days ago with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the non-fatal shooting on Jan. 14 of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.

When Moriarty announced charges last week, ICE called the action "unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt." DHS's Inspector General's Office is separate from ICE and is meant to serve as a watchdog for DHS agencies, including ICE.

Castro, 52, is alleged to have fired a gun through a home’s front door, shooting Sosa-Celis in the thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where both men lived.

Both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were in the U.S. Legally after arriving from Venezuela through the federal government's Temporary Protected Status program, which the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate in at least some cases.

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.

"Today's arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro," Moriarty said in her statement. "The BCA's investigative work was instrumental in this process and we're grateful for their collaboration as we pursue accountability for this incident on behalf of Mr. Sosa-Celis, his family and our community."

Last month, Moriarty charged ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., accusing him of pointing a gun at an occupied vehicle in a February incident.

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The incident involving Sosa-Celis, chronologically, occurred between the separate fatal shootings of two 37-year-old U.S. Citizens and protesters by federal agents in Minnesota.

Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer on Jan. 7, and more than two weeks later, Alex Pretti died after being struck multiple times as two Customs and Border Patrol officers fired their weapons.

Trump administration officials launched blistering criticisms of Good and Pretti just hours after their deaths. Vice-President JD Vance called Good a "deranged leftist," while Kristi Noem — who has since been succeeded by Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary — said Good's actions in her vehicle in the moments prior to her killing constituted an act of "domestic terrorism."

Minnesota has sued DHS, alleging that federal officials are denying state investigators access to information required to conduct their own probes into the Good and Pretti killings.

Noem stands by remarks calling U.S. Citizens killed in Minneapolis terrorists

The Justice Department has said the FBI was conducting a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing, while CBP is conducting its own internal investigation of that deadly incident.

However, Todd Blanche, now acting U.S. Attorney general, said in January there was "no basis" for a civil rights investigation into Good's fatal shooting.

At a recent Capitol Hill committee hearing, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, blasted Blanche for launching a probe of Good's domestic partner, a move that reportedly led to a handful of federal prosecutors to resign in protest.

The federal government launched Operation Metro Surge in December, mostly targeting migrants from Minnesota's Somalia-born population. The push came after several Somali Americans were charged in fraud schemes perpetuated in the state.

Tom Homan, the Trump border czar, said as the operation was winding down in mid-February that about 4,000 people had been arrested. While Homan boasted of capturing the "worst of worst" of violent criminals, some analyses found that a significant percentage of those rounded up had no criminal record in the country.

Democrats have accused the Trump administration and Justice Department of misrepresenting some contentious incidents amid its deportation efforts. Some judges have even questioned the presentations.

Last week, Chicago’s top federal prosecutor abandoned a closely watched case for four activists who protested outside a federal building during last year’s immigration crackdown in that city, after a judge scrutinized allegations of grand jury misconduct by the prosecutor's office. The misconduct included a federal prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside proceedings.

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