Minnesota ICE Shooting Case

The story so far

As of September 21, 2026

This case began with a door and a shot. ICE officer Christian Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime after he allegedly fired through the front door of a Minneapolis home on Jan. 14, wounding 24-year-old Venezuelan Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during a deportation operation. The charges were filed in Hennepin County, and Minnesota wants Castro in a local courtroom to face them.

Castro was arrested in Texas on a Minnesota warrant. To move him, Texas needs its governor to sign off on extradition. Minnesota went to federal court to force that handoff, but on Aug. 26 a federal judge in Texas refused, saying the court could not step in yet because the state process in Texas was not finished. After a Texas detention window expired, Castro was released there; on Sept. 4 he turned himself in to face a federal indictment alleging six counts of making false statements about the shooting, and he has pleaded not guilty.

The fight has shifted from a pure custody dispute to a split prosecution. Minnesota’s assault case still depends on getting Castro into a Hennepin County courtroom. The federal false statements case can proceed in federal court without waiting on a signature in Austin. That sequence matters because whatever facts are established in federal court about what happened at the door will frame the state case that remains pending across state lines.

The stakes widened this week with a separate ICE shooting in Austin. On Sept. 20, 28-year-old Venezuelan delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot by an ICE officer in North Austin; he remains detained with a bullet still in his back as protests and calls for video and an independent investigation mount. That incident brought the number of people shot by federal immigration agents this year to eleven. The through line is control of the record: in Minneapolis, a grand jury says the officer’s story does not match the evidence; in Austin, the victim’s custody and any footage will determine what the public can see about why force was used and on what basis.