In Minnesota, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced that state prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer over a nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.
Moriarty said Monday that Christian Castro, 52, was charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting. Moriarty said her office also issued a warrant for Castro’s arrest.
At a news conference, Moriarty said Castro is an ICE agent but that federal badge status does not prevent state criminal charges for conduct in Minnesota. She said she expects her office to keep pursuing the case, even if Castro’s defense attempts to move it to federal court.
Moriarty described the incident as unfolding after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to a Minneapolis apartment duplex where Aljorna and Sosa-Celis lived. Moriarty said Castro fired through the home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh. Moriarty said neither Sosa-Celis nor Aljorna posed a threat during the confrontation and that both were legally in the U.S.
Moriarty said federal authorities had initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer with items including a broom handle and a snow shovel, but that a federal judge later dismissed those charges. She said the dismissal came after the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, sought a highly unusual motion, describing “newly discovered evidence” as “materially inconsistent” with the allegations and evidence presented at the preliminary hearing.
The federal judge’s decision dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning they could not be refiled, and Rosen said that approach “would serve the interests of justice.” Following the dismissal, Moriarty said ICE and the Justice Department opened a joint investigation into whether officers lied about what happened.
ICE responded to the county’s charges in a statement, saying the U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating statements from officers and that those officers could face disciplinary action, including being fired, and possible criminal prosecution. ICE also called the Hennepin County attorney’s decision “unlawful” and said it was “nothing more than a political stunt.”
Moriarty said her office received no cooperation from the federal government and described broader clashes between Minnesota officials and the Trump administration over whether state authorities have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct. She said state officials do not trust the federal government to investigate itself and hold officers accountable.
She also placed the case within a larger investigation by Hennepin County into multiple incidents during the crackdown. Moriarty said her office last month charged Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with two counts of second-degree assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car on a highway, and she said he remains at large. Moriarty said the county is also investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and that it sued the administration in March to gain access to evidence in those cases and the one involving Sosa-Celis.
Moriarty said the county has video evidence that appears to show events leading up to the shooting, including a person with a snow shovel outside the house near the street who then retreats toward the home. She said the video shows other people running toward the house, scuffling near the front steps for about 10 seconds, and that the exact moment of the shooting is not clear on the recording.
Moriarty said the bullet traveled through the front door, struck Sosa-Celis’s leg, and then hit the wall of a child’s room. She also said a presidential pardon would not be possible for the state charges, even if Castro were to be found guilty in federal court.