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ICE agent Christian Castro, who shot and wounded Julio Sosa-Celis in January, made his first Minnesota court appearance Thursday, held on $200,000 bail with no plea entered yet on four assault charges.
- Surveillance video undercut Castro's original account of the shooting, leading prosecutors to drop charges against the two men he'd accused and instead charge Castro himself with assault and lying to investigators.
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Castro's case now runs on two tracks — a Hennepin County assault prosecution and a federal false-statements indictment — with his next hearing set for Friday in St. Paul.
MINNEAPOLIS — Eight months after firing the shot that wounded 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis inside a north Minneapolis duplex, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro walked into a Hennepin County courtroom Thursday afternoon for the first time since state prosecutors charged him in the case. The 52-year-old appeared roughly a day after Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents took him into custody near downtown Minneapolis, according to KSTP and MPR News.
A Surrender Interrupted by an Arrest
Castro had driven from Texas intending to turn himself in to state authorities at his attorney's office, according to Reuters reporting carried by KFGO, but Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents intercepted him minutes before that planned handoff and booked him into the Hennepin County Jail on an outstanding warrant instead. Attorney Daniel Gerdts told Reuters the arrest, though earlier than expected, followed an arrangement he had made directly with investigators. A second lawyer for Castro, Rolando Cantu, rejected any suggestion his client was trying to dodge the case, telling reporters, "He wants his day in court." Jail records show his bail was set at $200,000, and as of Thursday's hearing he had not yet entered a plea on the state charges.
How a Traffic Stop Turned Into Gunfire
The case dates to Jan. 14, when Castro and a partner pursued Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan immigrant then 26, after what began as a traffic stop, according to charging documents cited by Sahan Journal. Aljorna drove to the north Minneapolis duplex he shared with Sosa-Celis and ran for the door as Castro caught up to him on foot. Sosa-Celis came outside to help pull his roommate away from the agent, and the two men made it inside just as Castro fired a single round through the closed door — the bullet striking Sosa-Celis in the leg and passing into a child's bedroom, according to ProPublica's reporting. Homeland Security's initial public account described the opposite scenario: agents ambushed and beaten with a broom and a snow shovel, leaving Castro to fire in what it called self-defense.
Video Tells a Different Story
That version collapsed once investigators reviewed footage from a city traffic camera. The recording shows the men dropping their tools and scrambling toward the house rather than advancing on Castro, according to Axios, which reported that authorities had access to the footage within hours of the shooting yet moved forward with charges before reviewing it. Federal prosecutors, who had used Castro's account to charge Aljorna and Sosa-Celis with assaulting an officer, dropped those charges on Feb. 12, and ICE's own director acknowledged the agents involved appeared to have made "untruthful statements," as the Minnesota Reformer reported at the time.
Hennepin County Steps In
With the federal case against the two men gone, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty brought her own charges against Castro on May 18: four felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime, tied directly to the shooting and his account of what led to it.
An Extradition Fight That Dragged On for Months
Getting Castro from Texas to Minnesota proved to be its own battle. Texas Rangers arrested him on the Hennepin County warrant on May 29, and he spent roughly three months inside a Cameron County jail on the Mexican border while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott withheld the paperwork Minnesota needed to bring him home, according to the Associated Press. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued to keep Castro in custody while the dispute played out, and filings from his office pointed to Castro's property and a romantic relationship in Mexico as reasons to worry he might not return, per the Minnesota Reformer. The standoff ended when U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled that Abbott's silence, rather than an outright refusal, meant Castro could no longer legally be held — and Castro walked out of the Brownsville jail on Aug. 27, per PBS NewsHour.
A Second Case Opens on the Federal Side
Roughly a week after his release, a federal grand jury indicted Castro on six counts of making false statements to FBI agents about the shooting — a case CBS News Minnesota described as the first time the Justice Department has prosecuted a federal officer over conduct tied to Operation Metro Surge. Behind the scenes, the charging decision was contentious: reporting from ProPublica found that the assistant U.S. attorney originally assigned to the case had pushed for far more serious civil-rights charges before Justice Department leadership in Washington overruled him; he was later fired. Castro turned himself in in McAllen, Texas, pleaded not guilty to the six counts and was released on a $75,000 unsecured bond with a GPS ankle monitor, according to CBS News Minnesota.
Two Tracks, One Defendant
Thursday's hearing dealt only with the Hennepin County charges. Castro is due back in court Friday morning in St. Paul, this time before a federal judge, to face the false-statements indictment. Moriarty, whose office spent months waiting for Castro's return, said afterward that prosecutors were finally ready to move forward: "We look forward to commencing our prosecution," per CBS News Minnesota.
A Case Inside a Larger Reckoning
Castro's prosecution is unfolding against the backdrop of Operation Metro Surge, the monthslong federal enforcement push that brought thousands of additional agents into the Twin Cities and drew sustained protests. The Sosa-Celis shooting came within days of the fatal shooting of Renée Good and preceded the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents; both of those cases remain under review by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, according to Sahan Journal. Minneapolis and Hennepin County have since rolled out their own recovery programs — a $7 million city fund and a separate $2 million county fund — to help small businesses that lost revenue during the operation, according to the City of Minneapolis and WCCO. With a state trial and a federal case now moving on parallel tracks, Castro's legal fight is expected to continue well into 2027.
