ICE agent pleads not guilty to lying to FBI about shooting of man in Minneapolis

Christian Castro, a federal immigration officer accused of shooting a Venezuelan man during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis early this year and lying to investigators about what happened, is shown on Friday at the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in St. Paul, Minn. (Ellen Schmidt/The Associated Press)Social SharingA U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer (ICE) who allegedly shot through a door at a Venezuelan-born man at the height of a deadly immigration blitz launched by the Trump administration has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he lied to the FBI about the incident.

Christian Castro, 52, appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge in St. Paul, Minn., after prosecutors indicted him this month on six federal counts of making false statements about the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.

The accused's attorney, Daniel Gerdts, declined to comment on the case as he left the courthouse on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

The previous day, Castro pleaded not guilty to four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime filed by Hennepin County in Minneapolis, where the shooting incident took place.

"Mr. Castro invented a story to justify shooting through a front door into a house with multiple people in it. The bullet he fired lodged into the wall of a child's bedroom," Hennepin County district attorney Mary Moriarty said Thursday, after Castro entered his plea.

Castro is accused in both the state and federal cases of having lied to investigators when he told them he had been attacked with a broom handle and a snow shovel before firing his gun.

Castro's original account of the incident led to the filing of federal charges, later dismissed, for both Sosa-Celis and his acquaintance, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna. Both men were in the U.S. legally after arriving from Venezuela through the federal government's temporary protected status program, which the Trump administration has fought to eliminate.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks during a news conference on Thursday in Minneapolis, with Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty shown on the right. Both officials have criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of obstructing the Castro state case. (Ellen Schmidt/The Associated Press)Sosa-Celis, 24, was treated for a bullet wound in his thigh.

It was the second of three incidents during the federal government's Operation Metro Surge in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in which an ICE or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent drew a firearm. It happened between the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renée Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

Castro was placed on administrative leave in February by ICE and is suspended without pay pending the outcome of his cases.

After the incident, Castro left Minnesota for Texas, where he was apprehended in May on the state charges filed by Moriarty. At the time, ICE called the arrest "unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt."

Under Texas law, Castro could be detained for 90 days, during which Minnesota sought his extradition.

But last month, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott refused to sign an extradition warrant. Abbott said he was waiting for the outcome of an internal state investigation considering whether Castro was legally a "fugitive" for extradition purposes.

But he also cited an ongoing and unrelated federal investigation into fraud in Minnesota's social service program, earning a rebuke from the northern state's attorney general.

"If a governor can delay extraditions and cherry-pick cases according to their political tastes, then no state will be able to hold fugitive criminals accountable," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said last month.

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Minnesota sued Texas over what it characterized as obstruction but dropped the suit this week given that Castro, once released from jail after 90 days in Texas, soon returned to Minnesota to voluntarily face the charges.

"Despite the best efforts of the Texas governor to ignore both the United States' constitution and crystal-clear Supreme Court precedent, here we are," Moriarty said on Thursday.

Castro, who has ties to Mexico, has surrendered his passport as part of his pretrial release conditions.

The Good and Pretti shootings caused an outcry among immigration activists, state politicians and Democratic lawmakers in Washington.

The Minnesota operation was one of several high-profile deployments to U.S. cities in 2025 as the second Trump administration has sought to deport large numbers of people without legal standing in the country. Operation Metro Surge was launched in December, mostly targeting migrants from Minnesota's Somalia-born population.

Critics have accused the administration of running roughshod over the due process rights of those fighting deportation in some instances, and in other cases, legal refugees have suffered the consequences of the campaign.

Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, hailed the arrest of about 4,000 people as Operation Metro Surge began to wind down from its most active stage in February. Homan said the operation helped capture the "worst of the worst" of violent criminals. But some analyses found that a significant percentage of those rounded up had no criminal record in the country.

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."

The Justice Department did open a civil rights probe into the death of Pretti, but in response to questions before a Senate committee in July, Attorney General Todd Blanche did not offer a timeline on when the probe might be completed.