ICE Officer Indicted; DOJ Blocked Civil Rights Charge

An ICE officer who shot a Venezuelan man through a closed door in Minneapolis has been indicted — but only for lying about it. The federal prosecutor who wanted to charge him with a civil rights felony says Washington overruled him, and he has since been fired.

The indictment

Christian Castro, 52, was charged with six counts of making false statements to investigators in an indictment unsealed Friday, the Associated Press reported via the Los Angeles Times. It is the first Justice Department prosecution of a federal officer for conduct during Operation Metro Surge, the immigration blitz that sent thousands of agents into the Twin Cities.

According to the indictment, Castro told an FBI agent that a man grabbed a red broom off a front porch and began hitting him with it, that another man hit him with a snow shovel, and that he opened fire from the ground as the men ran away.

Prosecutors say that account was false. The indictment alleges Castro had a brief "physical interaction" with Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and another man before the two ran into a home with a 1-year-old child inside, and that Castro — standing, not on the ground — fired through the front door as they tried to close it, hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg.

"No person struck" Castro "with a broom as he described, and no persons wielded the broom and snow shovel as he described," the indictment says, per AP.

The charge that wasn't brought

Separately, ProPublica reported — in a piece republished by Salon — that Justice Department leadership in Washington quashed plans to charge Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law, the same civil rights statute used against the Minneapolis officers in the George Floyd case. It carries far heavier penalties than false statements.

That same person told AP that Evans has been fired and that the Justice Department is now investigating whether he broke any laws in how he handled the case. An automatic reply from Evans' DOJ email account said he was on leave; AP could not reach him.