An ICE Officer Shot a Man Through a Door in January. Prosecutors Say He Then Lied Six Times.

A federal indictment unsealed this month accuses an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer of lying six separate times to the FBI about the morning he fired a shot through the door of a north Minneapolis house and hit a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg.

Christian Castro, 52, of Texas, a deportation officer, pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in Texas to six counts of making false statements. Each count carries a maximum of five years in prison. He turned himself in earlier in the week and was released on a $75,000 unsecured bond with GPS monitoring.

The shooting happened on January 14. According to the indictment, Castro fired through a closed door during an encounter with Julio Sosa-Celis. The bullet struck Sosa-Celis in the leg and continued into the house, where several other people, including children, were present.

What prosecutors say happened next is the basis of the case. Castro told investigators he was on his back when he fired and that he had been attacked by multiple people wielding a broom and a snow shovel. Surveillance video and other material collected afterward did not match that account. Federal prosecutors had initially charged Sosa-Celis and another man based on the officer's version of events; those charges were dropped once investigators reviewed the footage.

Legal analysts have noted the significance of the venue as much as the charges: this is the first time the Justice Department has charged an officer over conduct during the administration's nationwide immigration operations while on duty. The department has otherwise defended agents in a string of shootings and confrontations over the past year, and the decision to bring a false-statements case rather than a civil rights charge is itself a choice about how far prosecutors were willing to go.

Castro's attorney argued that his client's record should count for something. "His life has been that of public service to our country and to our nation, either through its military or protecting its borders," the lawyer said.

Robin Wolpert, an attorney for Sosa-Celis, said her client intends to seek damages, and framed the alleged lies as a cover-up rather than a paperwork problem: the statements, she said, were made to "cover up the fact that he shot my client through the door."

The case runs alongside a state prosecution in Minnesota that has moved unevenly. A local prosecutor who opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting was fired, and the charge that resulted was downgraded — a sequence that Minnesota Democrats have pointed to in demanding an accounting of who decides when a federal officer faces consequences. Castro remains on GPS monitoring while the federal case proceeds.