A federal immigration officer wanted in the January shooting of a Venezuelan man during a Trump administration immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis was arrested in Texas on Friday, law enforcement authorities said. Christian Castro, 52, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was taken into custody 11 days after the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged him with assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension located Castro in Texas, and the Texas Rangers assisted in the arrest in Cameron County, which borders Mexico at the southern tip of the state, according to Hennepin County prosecutors.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said its agents were not involved in and were not present for Castro’s apprehension. The OIG statement denied claims the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office had made in press statements about the arrest, though it did not specify which claims it was disputing.
Castro is the first ICE agent to face state criminal charges stemming from the Minnesota immigration enforcement operations that began in early 2026. The Jan. 14 shooting of Sosa-Celis drew scrutiny after federal investigators opened an inquiry into whether ICE officers had lied about the circumstances of the shooting and other enforcement actions in the Minneapolis area.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, led by County Attorney Mary Moriarty, filed the charges against Castro on May 18. The criminal complaint alleged that Castro fired his weapon at Sosa-Celis and later provided a false account of the incident to investigators. Sosa-Celis survived the shooting.
Castro’s arrest in Texas — the state bordering Mexico — adds a geographic dimension to a case that has already drawn national attention for its intersection of state-level prosecution and federal immigration enforcement. The Texas Rangers’ assistance in the arrest means state law enforcement from two states were involved in the apprehension.
The Department of Homeland Security OIG’s public denial of involvement in the arrest marks an unusual public rupture between a federal watchdog office and a local prosecutor’s office over the details of an officer’s apprehension. The OIG is one of the agencies that has been investigating the broader Minneapolis ICE operations.
The charges against Castro are part of a widening legal examination of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which has included multiple shootings, federal civil rights investigations, and local government pushback against the operations.