ICE officer faces federal charges for lying over shooting of Venezuelan immigrant
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro gets into a car surrounded by news reporters moments after being released from the Carrizalez-Rucker Cameron County Detention Center in Brownsville, Texas on Aug. 27, 2026.
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Federal prosecutors are charging an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for lying to investigators about a shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minnesota earlier this year.
The criminal case is still under seal but was confirmed by a person not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation.
The charges represent a rare moment of the Justice Department seeking to hold immigration officers accountable for their actions and tactics while conducting arrests.
Christian Castro, the ICE officer, was in north Minneapolis in January as part of a broad immigration crackdown in the state known as Operation Metro Surge. Authorities say he fired his weapon through a closed door and shot Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant, in the leg.
The Justice Department initially charged Sosa-Celis with assault, but later dropped the charges after acknowledging that the officers involved had made untruthful statements about the incident.
Immigration enforcement officers faced widespread bipartisan criticism for their behavior during that immigration surge, including the killings of two U.S. citizens.
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Castro initially claimed under oath that Sosa-Celis attacked him, but surveillance footage contradicted his claim. Castro is separately facing state-level assault charges over the case in Minnesota.
The Hennepin County attorney had sought to extradite him from Texas to Minnesota to face the charges, but a federal judge in Texas last week ruled against Minnesota’s request to keep Castro in jail, pending his extradition.
Immigration enforcement officers faced widespread bipartisan criticism for their behavior during that immigration surge, including the killings of two U.S. citizens, as well as other violent incidents since then.
Federal immigration officers have been involved in over two dozen shootings under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The use of force has become a ‘default tool’ for ICE officers, a new report finds
In the latest incidents, ICE came under fire in July after the deadly shooting of two immigrants, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
In both instances, neither the target of the arrest nor the officers involved were wearing body cameras, according to the agency.
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