Minnesota Officials Charge ICE Agent Who Shot Venezuelan Immigrant & Falsely Reported What Happened

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]This is democracyow democracynow.org.

[00:00:03]I'm Amy Goodman. In Minnesota, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an ICE officer who allegedly shot a Venezuelan immigrant in North Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, then lied about what happened. On Monday, the Henipin County Attorney Mary Morardi announced federal agent Christian Castro will face four counts of secondderee assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

[00:00:27]Four counts of assault are a result of Mr. Castro shooting through the front door of a residence with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four adults who were just inside the door. These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest. Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa suffered a leg wound when Castro allegedly shot him through the door.

[00:00:52]that the Trump administration initially claimed that Castro fired in self-defense after accusing Saelles and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. A federal judge later dismissed those charges after video evidence clearly contradicted it. This comes as Henipin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Na Good and Alex Prety by federal agents during the Trump administration's violent immigration enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also addressed reporters Monday.

[00:01:28]>> There's a long line of cases where state authorities have had to hold federal agents accountable for breaking state law. I think the first one is called Enray Nagel. Uh and they and they flow from there. And so as uh as uh was said earlier, um there's no such thing as absolute immunity.

[00:01:49]>> For more, we're joined in our New York studio by Amelio Gonzalez Abalos. She is executive director of UNIDOS Minnesota, a grassroots organization that builds power with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial, and economic justice. She's here in New York. She just received the Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship on behalf of her group. Hands-off NYC also was a recipient this year. Amelia, congratulations on the award. Uh, as you're here, these charges are announced. talk about the significance of them.

[00:02:25]>> It is really important to demonstrate that there are opportunities to continue to embody a a functioning democracy when the crimes of people are meeting consequences. And that is what the institution of the Henipin County Attorney's Office is trying to attempt here after several months of the federal government obstructing investigation of both the murders of Renee Good, Alex Pury and also the other crimes that this officer is committing during Operation Metrosur and Operation Paris.

[00:02:57]So talk about what it means to have state officials and what this video evidence was so that people understand it's the state of Minnesota that is um going after the ICE um officer. Um but in the case of Renee Good and Alex Prey who were killed um as they bore witness to what was happening on the ground. uh Alex Prety, the VA nurse, the mom, uh Renee Good. Um they're having trouble, the state officials getting cooperation from the federal government who's taken the evidence.

[00:03:35]>> Correct. Since the beginning, they deployed false uh narratives, calling both Renee Good and Alex Pretty uh criminals and curies, trying to polarize their identities uh for the public narrative that could benefit the federal government. And uh they were also trying to hide the um overreach and the violence, the vitual in which federal agents were behaving on the ground, the amount of erosion of people's constitutional rights, uh the violations of people constitutional rights also in during detention and through the detention and the and the transportation of of immigrants into southern uh states for processing. And so when we see that uh Minnesota was a place where civil society was prepared to record and bear witness and they brought all of these activities and recordings to the light.

[00:04:31]They they shared in the social media, they shared with reporters. They shared with mainstream media. And so we had the evidence, people, regular people had the evidence that the narrative that the federal government was putting out there was not only false but also quite opposite to the type of um to to the type of uh u misguiding that that they were trying to u misguide the regular Americans into believing that the motans were unruly and radical. And so now the the county prosecutor has evidence from regular people, a a neighbor that recorded that actually nobody used a shovel, that there was no use of force but a Venezuelan immigrant, that in fact it was an agent that shot through the door when there was a baby inside the home, several children inside the home trying to figure out how to answer and ask if there was a warrant, if there was a judicial warrant, how to respond to the authorities. All that was recorded by neighbors. There were people trying to bear witness. They were eyewitnesses on the ground trying to bring these cases to light. And it was the people that equipped the county prosecutor to move the institution to embody the constitutional uh law and and and and the body of the institution of Henipin County to actually prosecute the wrongdoing of these officers. And that is that is what democracy looks like. It looks like separation of powers and uh getting material consequences of wrongdoing.

[00:06:04]>> Well, Amelio Gonzalez Avalos, thank you for being with us. Executive director of Unidos Minnesota, grassroots group that builds power with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial, and economic justice. We'll do an interview in Spanish and post online at democracynow.org. That does it for our show. I'll be tonight at the IFC Center after the six o'clock screening of the film about Democracy Now, Steal the Story, Please. I'll be there with the director, Tia Lesson, and with V, formerly known as Eve Enler. Tomorrow, I'll also be there for a Q&A after the 6:00 screening at IFC Center with our own Democracy Now co-host Nurmine Sheh, and the director Tia Lesson. Then to Boulder and Denver. Check our website.

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