An immigration enforcement officer accused of shooting an unarmed Venezuelan immigrant through a closed door, then lying about what led him to pull the trigger, is no longer behind bars. Christian Castro left a Brownsville, Texas, detention center at dawn Thursday after a federal judge declined to order Texas to send him back to Minnesota, capping a bitter three-month standoff between two state governments and landing at a moment when Venezuelan communities in South Florida are already on edge over a harsher stretch of federal enforcement.
A Wrong-Target Traffic Stop Turns Violent
The case traces back to the night of Jan. 14, when federal agents pulled over the wrong man entirely. Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan immigrant making a delivery run in north Minneapolis, noticed he was being tailed and drove straight home instead of pulling over; agents later realized they had the wrong target. After crashing his car near the duplex he shared with roommate Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Aljorna ran for the door with Castro close behind. What happened next in the yard is disputed, but the result isn't: Castro fired a shot through the closed entryway, and the round tore into 24-year-old Sosa-Celis's leg before lodging in a child's bedroom closet, per charges brought by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
Castro was working under Operation Metro Surge, the federal government's stepped-up enforcement campaign in Minnesota that had already turned deadly seven days earlier, when an ICE agent fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good, and would turn deadly again ten days later, when a Customs and Border Protection officer killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti.
Castro initially told investigators that Sosa-Celis and Aljorna came at him wielding a snow shovel and a length of broom handle, leaving him no choice but to fire. Municipal camera footage of the encounter undercut that version of events entirely, according to investigators. Prosecutors have since charged him with four counts of second-degree assault tied to a dangerous-weapon enhancement, plus one count of falsely reporting a crime.
The Case Against the Two Bystanders Quietly Collapses
Federal prosecutors initially charged Sosa-Celis and Aljorna with assaulting a federal agent, a case so widely publicized that the administration's homeland security chief at the time labeled it attempted murder. That case against the two men unraveled months later in an unusual reversal: the Justice Department moved to drop it after new evidence contradicted the original allegations, and ICE itself issued a statement conceding its agents had lied under oath, placing both officers on administrative leave pending an internal review.
A Rare Interstate Legal Fight
A Minnesota court put out a nationwide warrant for Castro's arrest in May, and he was taken into custody in Cameron County on May 29 in a joint operation involving state and federal investigators. He has been held in Brownsville ever since, because Texas Governor Greg Abbott has neither approved nor formally denied the paperwork Minnesota needs to bring him home, asking Texas's Secretary of State to look into Castro's circumstances first, according to the judge's written order.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz formally requested Castro's extradition back in early June, and when Abbott still hadn't acted by mid-August, Attorney General Keith Ellison sued him directly. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. sided with Texas last week, ruling that the case is not ripe for adjudication because Abbott had taken no final position on the warrant. Because Texas law bars holding someone longer than 90 days without extradition, that finding cleared the way for Cameron County's sheriff to release Castro the following morning.
Ellison made his frustration plain. "Minnesota should never have had to file this lawsuit or this motion," he said in a statement accusing Abbott of playing constitutional games with the case. A spokesperson for Abbott pushed back, arguing that "the Constitution requires deliberate consideration of extradition requests" and accusing Minnesota of trying to force federal courts to override the governor's authority.
Flight-Risk Warnings Went Unheeded
Minnesota's lawyers leaned hard on flight risk in trying to keep Castro locked up. Court filings point to recorded jail calls in which Castro allegedly talked about marrying a Mexican woman and settling into a home there once released, a detail state affidavits separately framed as evidence Castro was already involved with a woman across the border and already owned property there. The judge's ruling acknowledged the danger but found it legally insufficient to justify holding Castro past the 90-day limit. Hennepin County's Moriarty has warned that prosecuting Castro only gets harder once he crosses into Mexico, and both she and Ellison say the fight is far from finished.
Why Doral Is Watching Closely
None of this is happening in a vacuum for Venezuelan families in South Florida. Doral, widely described as home to the largest concentration of Venezuelans anywhere in the country, has spent much of 2026 absorbing the fallout of Washington stripping most Venezuelan Temporary Protected Status holders of their deportation shield, a move advocacy groups have fought with a petition carrying more than 130,000 signatures demanding its reinstatement. The city council's own vote to let local police assist with federal immigration enforcement has only deepened residents' unease.
A case in which an armed federal officer shot an unarmed Venezuelan man outside his own home, was caught fabricating his justification, and then walked free anyway is exactly the kind of accountability gap that Doral's TPS advocates have pointed to while pushing Congress toward a lasting fix for Venezuelan immigrants. That includes Doral Councilman Rafael Pineyro, the lone Venezuelan-American voice on the council, who has championed permanent legal status as an alternative to protections that can disappear overnight.
What Happens Next
The legal fight isn't close to over. Ellison says his office will keep pressing Abbott to hand Castro over and intends to pursue the criminal case wherever Castro ends up living in the meantime, even as Texas has separately moved to have Minnesota's lawsuit thrown out and multiple outlets report federal prosecutors are weighing their own charges against Castro. For now, Castro is a free man, Sosa-Celis is still recovering from his gunshot wound with no trial date in sight, and a standoff between two state governments over the limits of the Constitution's extradition clause remains unsettled.
