By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – An immigration officer has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements about the shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minnesota during a deportation surge last winter, according to a source familiar with the matter on Thursday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro was indicted on six counts of lying to investigators, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation. The charges will be unsealed once Castro is in custody, the person said.
The charges are an extraordinary step by a Justice Department that has refrained from alleging criminal wrongdoing by federal officers. This is the first known Justice Department prosecution of a federal immigration officer over wrongdoing in the Minneapolis operation, part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Castro faces state charges in Minnesota for shooting and wounding Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg on January 14, at the height of Trump’s deportation campaign in Minnesota, which drew weeks of protest.
There is an active Minnesota state arrest warrant for Castro, who spent 90 days in a Texas county jail. He was released last week after Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he was refusing to sign extradition papers sent by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat.
The state charges also include falsely reporting a crime after Castro allegedly wrongly told superiors at the Department of Homeland Security that Sosa-Celis and others attacked him with a snow shovel and broom, which was disproved by video evidence.
DHS has suspended Castro, and the person familiar with the case said a civil rights investigation is ongoing and no decision has been reached yet in that matter.
Matt Evans, a federal prosecutor who had been working on the case, was fired this week after ProPublica reported he sent an email to Sosa-Celis’ lawyers saying DOJ attorneys had stopped his efforts to bring federal charges, according to the person familiar with the case. Evans is now being investigated for obstruction of a grand jury investigation, the person said.
Castro has not publicly addressed the state charges against him since his release from the Cameron County jail last week, and he could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
The Trump administration has largely defended the conduct of ICE agents, saying incorrectly that they have absolute immunity from state prosecutions.
Robin Wolpert, a lawyer for Sosa-Celis, said in a statement her client wants Castro to be held “fully accountable” with stronger civil rights charges. “Mr. Castro has been indicted for making false statements,” she said. “But he made them to cover up the fact that he shot my client through the door of an occupied house without a self-defense justification.”
The ACLU of Minnesota announced on Thursday that it will represent Sosa-Celis as he sues the Trump administration.
(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff in Washington, D.C. and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Cynthia Osterman)
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