Judge blocks Minnesota bid to extradite Texas ICE agent accused of shooting man

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent accused of firing his gun and wounding a Venezuelan man in the leg is caught in an interstate extradition dispute between Texas and Minnesota – and could walk out of a Texas jail as soon as Wednesday after a federal judge refused to intervene.

Christian Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime by another, in relation to the incident in which he was involved in the wounding of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in January.

Minnesota authorities have been seeking to have him extradited since his arrest, but Castro remains in custody in Brownsville, Texas, on the US-Mexico border. Under Texas law, Castro must be released after 90 days of detention, which falls on this Thursday.

Siding with Texas, US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr – a Trump appointee – declined to order the state to extradite Castro.

A state official holds up an official-looking document

Federal prosecutors are considering bringing charges against Castro, who was earlier charged by local prosecutors in Minnesota with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime after the January incident, according to CBS News.

But the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has refused to extradite Castro to Minnesota.

Last week, Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general and a prominent Democrat, sued Abbott, a Republican very loyal to Donald Trump, arguing that the state’s actions are unlawful, to stop Texas from releasing him until his extradition.

“We have never heard of anything taking this long because it is an administrative process,” said Mary Moriarty, prosecutor for Hennepin county in Minnesota. “It is not supposed to be controversial.”

Ellison said: “Christian Castro’s not above the law and Greg Abbott isn’t either.”

Abbott has said that he would not respond to the extradition request, citing continuing investigations of fraud in government social service programs in Minnesota, which the US president used to justify his immigration crackdown there in January, which turned deadly and fueled a huge public backlash.

Castro is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet that lodged in a child’s bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

At a federal hearing on Tuesday in Brownsville before Rodriguez Jr, attorneys with the Minnesota attorney general’s office argued it would be hard to compel Castro to face charges in their state if he is released, and even harder if he flees.

Rodriguez said he was inclined not to keep the sheriff from releasing Castro, but he said he would provide an order responding to the temporary restraining order on Wednesday. He ultimately refused to order Texas to extradite the officer.

Attorneys representing the Texas governor’s office said the governor has not yet officially decided to deny or grant Minnesota’s extradition request and therefore the lawsuit is premature.

“I think ripeness is a significant issue,” Rodriguez told attorneys.

Abbott ordered an internal state investigation to determine if Castro is legally considered a “fugitive”. Trevor Ezell, Abbott’s general counsel, also questioned whether the court could impose a deadline for the governor to respond to an extradition request.

“There’s nothing legally left for them to investigate,” Kimberly Ann Svendsen, an attorney representing the Minnesota attorney general, told the judge.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

The Guardian wp:paragraph