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'Lying ICE Goon' Charged for Shooting Venezuelan Man in Minnesota
Christian Castro "is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota," said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
May 18, 2026
Minnesota state prosecutors on Monday charged and issued a nationwide arrest warrant for a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in connection with the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown in the Twin Cities area.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged 52-year-old ICE agent Christian Castro with four counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime after Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg on January 14.
“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a video announcing the move. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes in this state or any other.”
Federal authorities initially charged Sosa-Celis and his roommate, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, with assaulting an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel that day.
Then-US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Sosa-Celis and Aljorna “began to resist and violently assault" Castro, who fired his gun while on the ground out of fear for his life. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of “attempted murder."
However, US District Judge Paul Magnuson subsequently dropped the charges after video evidence directly contradicted the administration's claims, prompting Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to assert that "bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying.”
Moriarty said Monday that Castro's "narrative about what he said happened before, like he was hit with a shovel and broom and all of that, in the head multiple times," was disproven by "a thorough examination, including X-rays."
“There’s no demonstrable trauma to his body, except for an abrasion to his left hand at the base of the thumb," she added.
As The Minnesota Star Tribune reported:
Last month, the city of Minneapolis released surveillance footage that its cameras captured near the duplex where Sosa-Celis and Aljorna live with their partners.
Aljorna, who was making a DoorDash delivery, called home in the middle of a car chase after he fled a traffic stop by Castro and another ICE agent in an unmarked vehicle. The federal agents believed they were stopping an immigration enforcement target, but it ended up being a case of mistaken identity. One of the adults in the duplex called 911 to report what was happening and Moriarty said an emergency dispatcher turned the camera to face the duplex.
The video evidence showed Aljorna racing to the house after he crashed his car into a light pole. Castro pursued him. Sosa-Celis was waiting outside. There was a brief scramble in the yard as the three men were entangled. A shovel and broom were present near the area, but there was no indication they were used as weapons.
A Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation showed that the shot Castro fired passed through Sosa-Celis' leg and then penetrated a nearby home, lodging in the wall of a bedroom where several small children sleep.
ICE agents then broke down the home's door and arrested Sosa-Celis, Aljorna, and three other people. Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma, who had nothing to do with the incident, was accused of attacking Castro and jailed for two weeks without charges in Texas. Two women—who had no criminal records and were also not involved in the incident—were separated from their young children and also detained in Texas for two weeks before being released without charge.
Castro is the second ICE agent that Moriarty's office has charged in connection with Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration's 70-day Twin Cities blitz. Last month, Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. was charged with two counts of felony second-degree assault after he allegedly pulled a gun on two local residents during a February traffic dispute.
On Monday, Moriarty also addressed public concerns about why her office hasn't yet charged ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who fatally shot Minneapolis mother Renee Good in January, or Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez in connection with the deadly shooting of Department of Veteran Affairs nurse Alexi Pretti later that month.
“I have really a lot of empathy for everybody who has said, ‘You have the videos, why haven’t you charged?’ We get that,” she said. “From the inside, we are doing a lot of work. These are unusual cases. It’s just a very unique scenario."
“We obviously are trying to be very thoughtful and intentional," Moriarty added. "While I understand people really want accountability, and they saw what they saw in the videos, this is incredibly complex. The last thing we want to do is make a mistake if we feel something is appropriately charged and get dismissed out of federal court.”
In March, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state probes into the shooting of Good, Pretti, and Sosa-Celis.
Moriarty's announcement was hailed by immigrant rights advocates and opponents of Trump's sweeping crackdown, with one popular progressive account on Bluesky welcoming the prosecution of what it called a "lying ICE goon."
"This is BIG," attorney and American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said on X. "These are the first charges relating to an incident that occurred during an enforcement operation. The officers involved lied under oath about this shooting, as the Trump [administration] admitted."
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For Maine Communities, Congress Must Fund Defenders, Not Detention and Deportation
Having experienced firsthand the terrors of the Trump administration’s detention and deportation agenda, Maine has already paid the price of this cruelty. We cannot afford one additional dollar of public investment in immigration operations.
May 17, 2026
In recent weeks, Congress passed a budget proposal seeking additional billions to fund federal immigration operations. Despite widespread public opposition to the inhuman actions of the Trump administration’s immigration agencies, Congress is moving forward with these budget plans that would further harm the stability and well-being of Maine’s families and immigrant communities. As the budget reconciliation process continues, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and our representatives must reject these dangerous proposals and instead fund real solutions to protect families and our constitutional rights.
On top of the $170 billion that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was granted last year, the proposal passed by the House and the Senate would give $70 billion in additional funding for harmful immigration operations, with no strings attached. Having experienced firsthand the terrors of the Trump administration’s detention and deportation agenda, Maine has already paid the price of this cruelty. We cannot afford one additional dollar of public investment in immigration operations.
Over the last 15 months, DHS has used its billions to send federal agents into Maine and other communities to abduct people from courtrooms, workplaces, and homes, tearing them from their right to a fair day in court. This has led to unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rates, an ever-increasing death toll in detention, thousands of family separations, and growing numbers of removals without due process.
According to an analysis by our organization, ICE apprehensions in Maine increased 37% when comparing all of 2024 and the first 10.5 months of 2025. ICE predominantly targeted Black and brown individuals without any criminal charges. ICE relies on categorizing people as having “Pending Criminal Charges” or “Other.” They targeted working-age men, disproportionately from African and Latin American countries, robbing families of their breadwinners.
Instead of attacking families and their constitutional rights, our federal funds should be used to support families and uphold due process.
Immigrants are integral to our state. More than 19,000 children in Maine have at least one immigrant parent. Over 56,000 immigrants live in Maine—and though they make up only 4% of the population, immigrant workers account for nearly 5% of the labor force. In 2025 alone, Maine’s immigrant residents paid 625.8 million in taxes.
In the face of escalating raids, in partnership with Presente!ME and their People’s Coalition on Safety and Justice, Maine Immigrants Rights' Coalition launched an Immigrant Defense Hotline and Resource Hub in October 2025 as “Community Watch” to record ICE sightings and offer legal support. Because there is no public defender system in immigration court, our services have been a critical last line of defense. But up against chaotic federal agencies with unlimited funding, this has not been enough.
Instead of attacking families and their constitutional rights, our federal funds should be used to support families and uphold due process. Research, including a recent three-year randomized study by the Vera Institute of Justice, consistently shows that people with a lawyer are far more likely to obtain the legal relief they are entitled to—allowing them to return to their jobs, communities, and families. When our rights and communities are threatened, we must fund defenders, not the detention and deportation machine.
As a diverse network of over 100 organizations, my partners and I are committed to defending due process and holding the government accountable. Just as we work every day to hold DHS accountable in the courtroom, Congress must do the same in Washington and reject this unnecessary and harmful infusion of funding for immigration detention and operations. Congress should invest in less costly, more supportive services like legal representation that uphold the right to due process and help people navigate the immigration system without disrupting our communities.
As Maine’s congressional leaders move forward with their budget reconciliation proposals, we urge them to remember that the stability, rights, and well-being of our communities are in their hands. We send you to Washington to invest in solutions that give every Mainer a fair shot at building a safe, stable, and dignified life in this nation they call home.
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ICE Is Counting on Our Silence
It is more critical than ever to be in the streets, showing up for our neighbors, advocating to our elected officials, and using all the tools available to us to show the Trump administration that we are still paying attention.
May 13, 2026
When thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents invaded Minneapolis this past January, Twin Cities residents, and people across the country, jumped into action, trailing these agents, organizing major protests, and dropping off food and supplies to those understandably afraid to leave their homes.
Both of our organizations, too, took action. Bend the Arc: Jewish Action leadership traveled to join a clergy day of protest alongside close partners in Minneapolis, and T’ruah sent some 50 rabbis to support dozens of their colleagues who live and work there.
Lay people and clergy alike similarly stepped up in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and other cities targeted by major Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Minnesotans successfully diminished the massive ICE takeover of their city. This is a testament to the power of citizen organizing and action.
But the absence of visible deployments of thousands of agents to a single city does not mean that the threat of ICE has disappeared, or has changed its tactics of kidnapping our neighbors, detaining immigrants without due process, and deporting people to places where they won’t be safe–including both their birthplaces and countries they’ve never even been to.
Every time we show up in the streets matters as we move through the wilderness to become the country of our aspirations.
Without the daily photos of masked ICE agents facing off against citizens armed only with whistles and cell phones, or dragging children in bunny hats or dads in pajamas out of their homes, it is easy to sit back and to believe that the threat to our neighbors has dissipated.
This is far from the truth. Last year's “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” gave the Department of Homeland Security $191 billion for immigrant detention and deportation, the largest immigration enforcement funding surge in American history. ICE alone received $75 billion, nearly nine times its annual budget. With that money, ICE is detaining more than 70,000 people per day across the country in truly horrific conditions; at least 17 people have already died in custody this year, which follows a record high 32 deaths in 2025.
ICE has yet to spend most of the money they received last year, and still they can enact this much violence in our communities. But for President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans this is not enough—right now they are trying to funnel up to $140 billion more dollars to these agencies to separate immigrant families.
In the Jewish calendar, we are currently counting the Omer, noting each day and each week between Passover and Shavuot. Within the biblical narrative, the Israelites have achieved freedom from slavery, but have not yet reached Mount Sinai, where they will receive Torah. With the drama of fleeing Egypt and crossing the sea in the past, they are stuck in the day-to-day slog of becoming free. They are disoriented, complaining, backsliding, and agitated. Counting the Omer reminds us that liberation does not come in a single moment, but rather takes days and weeks and even years of plodding through the wilderness.
It would be easy to throw up our hands and demand to go back to Egypt, as the Israelites did. But the true work of liberation requires continued action, even in the absence of flashy images and dramatic victories.
This is why our organizations, along with over 60 co-sponsoring Jewish groups, led a national day of Jewish moral action against ICE last month. This day of action followed a massive protest outside ICE headquarters in February that involved more than 600 Jews, including some 100 rabbis and cantors.
Scholars of fascism and democracy teach us that sustained nonviolent protests engaging only 3.5% of a population have been effective at multiple points in history at creating regime change. Every time we show up in the streets matters as we move through the wilderness to become the country of our aspirations.
Indeed, it is even more critical to be in the streets, showing up for our neighbors, advocating to our elected officials, and using all the tools available to us to show the Trump administration that we are still paying attention. That their attempts to distract and wear us down will not work. That we will always show up for each other.
Minneapolis may not be in daily headlines but the impacts of ICE’s violence will linger. The same remains true in far too many American cities. In the wilderness, the ancient Israelites kept complaining. They built a golden calf. They begged to go back. And they still made it to Sinai. Not because the wilderness was easy, but because they kept moving through it.
This is not a metaphor for passive endurance. Counting the Omer is an active process—you have to say the words out loud, with intention, or the count does not count. We can’t drift through the 49 days on autopilot. We have to choose, each day, to be in the middle of the story. We have a vision of the Promised Land we are trying to achieve here in the United States. It’s one where all of us, regardless of faith, race, ethnic background, ability, or birthplace, can be free.
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