Minnesota county charges an ICE officer in a nonfatal shooting during
Trump's immigration crackdown
[May 19, 2026]
By HANNAH FINGERHUT and TIM SULLIVAN
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota county prosecutor on Monday announced
charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the
nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s
crackdown in the state.
The officer, Christian Castro, is charged with four counts of
second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the
Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Hennepin County Attorney
Mary Moriarty said at a news conference. A warrant was issued for his
arrest.
“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him
immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,”
Moriarty said, adding that Sosa-Celis never posed a threat and that her
office received no cooperation from the federal government. “There is no
such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes
in this state or any other.”
Castro, 52, fired through a home's front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the
thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo
Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and
Sosa-Celis lived, Moriarty said, noting that both Sosa-Celis and Aljorna
were legally in the U.S.
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.
In a statement, ICE said the U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating
statements from officers, who could face disciplinary action including
being fired and criminally prosecuted. ICE called the Hennepin County
attorney's action “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.”
One of several cases being investigated
The Trump administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis
and St. Paul area as part of President Donald Trump’s national
deportation campaign and considered Operation Metro Surge a success. But
tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign, and the shooting deaths
of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers sparked
mass unrest and raised questions about officers’ conduct.
Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over who has
the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty
conduct, with the administration suggesting that state officials don’t
have jurisdiction.
State officials, though, have said they don’t trust the federal
government to investigate itself or hold officers accountable.
“There’s no modern precedent for what happened to the people here in
Minnesota,” Moriarty said Monday. “So it requires a lot of us to dig in
and look at ways to hold people accountable that we probably never
thought we would be looking at in our careers.”
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Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty speaks during a news
conference at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis,
Minn., on Monday, May 18, 2026. Attorney General Keith Ellison
stands at left. (Renée Jones Schneider/Minnesota Star Tribune via
AP)
Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, has been investigating
multiple incidents that occurred during the crackdown. Moriarty's
office last month charged Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with two counts
of second-degree assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in
a car on a highway, but he is still at large. She said Monday that
her office has made “substantial progress” in apprehending him.
The county is also investigating Good's and Pretti’s killings, and
sued the administration in March to gain access to evidence in the
two cases and the one involving Sosa-Celis. Although Moriarty hasn't
charged anyone in either killing, she has said she's confident her
office's investigations will bring transparency, even if doesn't
bring charges.
Video captured the Sosa-Celis confrontation
The cases against Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were dropped after a highly
unusual motion from the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota, U.S.
Attorney Daniel Rosen, who said “newly discovered evidence” was
“materially inconsistent with the allegations” that were made in the
criminal complaint and with evidence presented at their preliminary
hearing. He said dismissal with prejudice, which meant the charges
couldn’t be refiled, “would serve the interests of justice.”
Minneapolis last month released video showing the moments before
Sosa-Celis's shooting, captured from a distance by a city-owned
security camera.
The video appears to show a person standing with a snow shovel
outside the house, near the street, then retreating toward the house
and tossing the shovel into the yard. This happens as a person being
chased by another person runs up from the street, falls on the
sidewalk, gets up, and keeps heading toward the house.
The three appear to scuffle near the front steps for about 10
seconds. The exact moment when Sosa-Celis is shot isn’t clear. A car
with flashing lights pulls up, and another person walks up.
Castro fired from the yard through the home’s front door knowing
there were people who had just run inside, Moriarty said. “The
bullet traveled through the door and struck Mr. Sosa-Celis’s leg
before making its final impact in the wall of a child’s room."
She said her office would continue to prosecute the case even if
Castro’s defense tries to move the case from state court to federal
court. She also noted that a presidential pardon would not be
possible for the state charges even if Castro were to be found
guilty in a federal court.
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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
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