Authorities say agent fired into home with people inside, lied about circumstances.
Published On 3 Sep 2026
Federal prosecutors in the United States have charged an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer accused of lying under oath to investigators regarding the shooting of a Venezuelan man during an immigration crackdown this year.
Prosecutors alleged that Christian Castro lied to federal investigators about the events that led up to him firing on 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through the door of a Minnesota home in January.
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The Associated Press news agency and The New York Times reported the indictment, quoting a person familiar with the matter who was not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly. It was expected to be unsealed when Castro is detained.
Castro, a former Department of Homeland Security agent, also faces multiple state felony charges in Minnesota related to the nonfatal shooting, including assault with a dangerous weapon.
Authorities in the Midwestern state had sought to extradite Castro from Texas to face trial. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican and President Donald Trump loyalist, declined to cooperate with the request.
The ensuing standoff left Castro detained in Texas for 90 days before his release last week. Under Texas law, the state cannot hold the subject of an extradition order for longer than that. His whereabouts were unclear as of Thursday.
The charges mark a rare move by the Department of Justice under Trump.
Trump’s top officials have repeatedly argued that immigration agents maintain broad protections while conducting enforcement, a position rejected by many legal experts.
For example, no one has been charged in the fatal shootings by immigration agents of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January.
An Associated Press review conducted in February found about two dozen ICE employees and contractors had faced criminal charges since 2020.
An American Civil Liberties Union report released in July documented instances of violent tactics or other civil rights violations in about a third of 1,200 immigration enforcement incidents reviewed in 2025 alone.
Video evidence contradicts statement
The Trump administration distanced itself from the Castro case after video emerged contradicting the agent’s initial accounts of the confrontation.
Castro told investigators that Sosa-Celis had attacked him, which the surveillance footage showed did not happen.
Todd Lyons, then acting head of ICE, said at the time that the footage “has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements”.
Castro and a fellow agent chased Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan national, after a traffic stop, according to charging documents.
Aljorna fled to the home he shared with Sosa-Celis. After a brief scramble, the two men ran inside. Castro then shot through the closed door, “knowing [the home] was occupied by several people”, the documents said.
One witness said there were two children in the house when Castro opened fire. Sosa-Celis was hit in the leg.
Federal authorities have since suspended Castro and dropped all charges against Sosa-Celis and his co-defendant, who were both initially accused of forcibly assaulting an ICE officer. The other agent involved in the incident was also suspended, but has not yet been charged.
Thursday’s indictment comes after ProPublica this week reported that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials had blocked prosecutors from pursuing more serious civil rights charges against Castro, including “deprivation of rights under color of law”.
However, a source close to the investigation told the AP the active investigation could still result in civil rights charges.
The Trump administration has scaled back the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and dismantled several Biden-era police oversight initiatives since returning to office in January 2025.
That has come as the administration has revved up its mass deportation campaign across the country.
In August, immigration agents detained 50,925 people with the Department of Homeland Security hailing it as a new record for the “highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month”.
