ICE Agent Christian Castro Charged With Four Counts of Assault for January Shooting of Venezuelan Man Through Minneapolis Front Door
Minnesota prosecutors say Castro was never under threat, was not struck by any object and falsely reported that a shovel and broom had been used as weapons during the January 14 Operation Metro Surge raid that wounded Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Hennepin County prosecutors on Monday charged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime for shooting Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through the front door of a north Minneapolis home during a January 14 immigration raid. A nationwide warrant has been issued for Castro's arrest, marking the first criminal charges brought against a federal immigration officer in the seven-month-old enforcement surge that the White House has called the largest in American history.
The complaint describes a confrontation in which Castro and other ICE agents arrived at a single-family home shortly before 5:30 a.m. as part of Operation Metro Surge, the administration's signature large-scale enforcement push in Democratic-run cities. According to charging documents, Castro fired through the closed front door, striking Sosa-Celis four times, then radioed that he had been struck by a shovel and a broom. Prosecutors say body-camera footage and forensic evidence show Castro was never under threat. "A shovel and broom were present near the area, but there is no indication they were used as weapons," the complaint reads. Sosa-Celis survived after emergency surgery at Hennepin County Medical Center.
The charges come one week after Sosa-Celis's release from federal immigration detention and roughly four months after a separate Minneapolis ICE shooting in which agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, an American citizen, in front of her children during a botched raid. That earlier killing set off the largest sustained protests Minneapolis has seen since the 2020 murder of George Floyd, prompting Governor Tim Walz to demand a federal civil-rights investigation and Mayor Jacob Frey to bar city police from cooperating with ICE in most circumstances. State officials have privately briefed reporters that other ICE shootings from the surge are under active review.
Castro's whereabouts were not immediately known Monday, and a Justice Department spokesperson said the department was "evaluating its legal obligations" before commenting on the warrant. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor prosecutor who has frequently clashed with the Trump administration, said in a statement that her office "will not allow federal agents to operate above the law inside our community." The Department of Homeland Security defended Castro in a brief statement, saying the agent had acted "in good faith" during a "violent confrontation with a deportable alien."
The case is likely to land quickly in front of the Supreme Court because federal officers are typically afforded immunity for actions taken in the course of duty under the Supremacy Clause, and the Justice Department has signaled it will move to remove the prosecution to federal court. Civil liberties groups including the ACLU and the American Immigration Council, which last week released a report documenting six deaths in California ICE custody since September 2025, said the Castro charges could become the most consequential test of state authority over federal immigration officers in decades.
Originally reported by CNN.