ICE officer wanted on assault charges arrested in Minneapolis

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer facing charges in the alleged shooting of a Venezuelan migrant during the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year has been taken into custody in the state.

Christian Castro, 52, was booked into the Hennepin County Jail on an outstanding warrant shortly after 4 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to jail records. He is being held on a $200,000 bail.

Castro is scheduled to appear in a downtown Minneapolis courtroom on Thursday afternoon on charges including four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime. He has not yet entered a plea.

The Hill has reached out to Castro’s attorney for comment.

The charges stem from a January scuffle that occurred after an attempted traffic stop during Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, where Castro has been accused of shooting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg and lying to authorities about how the incident unfolded.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security initially claimed that an officer, determined to be Castro, fired a “defensive shot” after being attacked by three men with a snow shovel and a broom handle.

But court documents revealed that the men had dropped the broom and shovel and were running toward a nearby apartment “as soon as [they] saw his pistol.”

The department later said that they were investigating what appeared to be “untruthful statements” made by the officer after reviewing additional video evidence. Castro has since been indicted by a federal grand jury on six counts of making materially false statements to investigators.

Castro was released on Aug. 27 from a Texas county jail, where he had spent 90 days in custody, after a judge declined to intervene in an extradition fight between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).