{"id":454891,"date":"2026-09-05T22:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454891\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T22:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:26:13","slug":"opinion-a-san-diego-deputy-got-12-years-an-ice-agent-got-a-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/454891\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: A San Diego deputy got 12 years; an ICE agent got a cover-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sheriff's<\/a>The Front Street intake entrance to the San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Department. (File Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

I spent 35 years wearing a badge in this county, and I learned one thing that never stopped being true: the law doesn\u2019t care what agency patch is on your shoulder. At least it isn\u2019t supposed to. What we\u2019re watching right now proves that promise is being broken on purpose, by the very people sworn to keep it.<\/p>\n

An ICE officer named Christian Castro shot a Venezuelan immigrant<\/a>, Julio Sosa-Celis, through a closed door in Minneapolis back in January. The Department of Homeland Security<\/a> didn\u2019t just get the story wrong \u2014 DHS lied to the American public. Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stood in front of cameras and called it self-defense, an \u201cambush\u201d with a broom handle and a snow shovel. <\/p>\n

Video surfaced the following month and shredded that fiction. Federal prosecutors quietly dropped the assault charges they\u2019d filed against Sosa-Celis and another man, because the men who filed them knew the truth wouldn\u2019t survive a courtroom. This week, Castro was finally indicted \u2014 but only for lying to investigators<\/a>. Not for putting a bullet through a door and into a man\u2019s leg. Not for the deprivation of a man\u2019s civil rights.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the part that should make your blood run cold. The assistant U.S. attorney who investigated this case \u2014 a career prosecutor named Matthew Evans, the kind of person who spends decades doing the unglamorous work of holding power accountable \u2014 believed the evidence supported the real charge: deprivation of rights under color of law. <\/p>\n

The statute exists for exactly this situation. He pushed for it. He was overruled<\/a> by his own U.S. attorney and by political appointees at the Justice Department in Washington. Then, days later, he was fired.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s call this what it is. It\u2019s not prosecutorial discretion. It\u2019s the Justice Department being weaponized \u2014 not to enforce the law evenly, but to shield federal agents from the same statute that applies to everybody else with a badge and a gun. <\/p>\n

When the people at the top of DOJ overrule their own prosecutor\u2019s judgment to protect an ICE officer, and then fire him for objecting on the record, they aren\u2019t managing a case. They\u2019re sending a message to every federal agent in the country: break the rules under this administration\u2019s banner, and Washington will cover for you.<\/p>\n

Compare that to what happened six years ago, right here in San Diego County. A sheriff\u2019s deputy named Aaron Russell shot an unarmed man, Nicholas Bils, in the back as Bils ran away from him. No threat. No warning. Bils died on the pavement outside our own downtown jail. <\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division didn\u2019t blink. They indicted Russell under that very same statute and took it to trial \u2014 twice, after the first jury hung. The second jury convicted him this past March in under seven hours. He was sentenced in May to 12 years in federal prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Same law. Same statute. Same basic facts: an armed officer, an unarmed man, a shooting nobody needed, a story that collapsed under video. In one case, the DOJ ran through to conviction without flinching. In the other, DOJ\u2019s own leadership blocked and then punished the prosecutor for trying. The difference isn\u2019t the evidence. The difference is which administration was in power and which badge needed protecting.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not naive about prosecutorial discretion. Cases differ, juries are unpredictable, reasonable lawyers disagree. But strip away the lawyerly language and look at what actually happened: a sitting U.S. attorney and the DOJ killed a legitimate civil rights charge against a federal agent, then fired the prosecutor who documented it in writing. <\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t discretion. That\u2019s a cover-up wearing a suit.<\/p>\n

Equal justice under the law is carved into the front of the Supreme Court building. It is not a slogan. It is supposed to be the whole point. A local sheriff\u2019s deputy answers to it. A federal immigration officer, under this Justice Department, apparently does not \u2014 and the prosecutor who tried to make him answer to it lost his job for the trouble.<\/p>\n

My mother used to tell me the measure of a just system isn\u2019t how it treats the people in power \u2014 it\u2019s how it treats everyone else the same way it treats them. By that measure, what happened this week in Washington isn\u2019t justice. It\u2019s protection, dressed up to look like it.<\/p>\n

Matthew Evans did his job. He told the truth in writing and got fired for it. Somebody in Washington owes the public an answer, under oath, and soon.<\/p>\n

David A. Myers is a retired commander in the\u00a0San Diego Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>\u00a0with 35 years of service. He served as director of safety and security at Jewish Family Service of San Diego from 2023 to 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Want to submit a letter to the editor, guest column or\u00a0opinion\u00a0piece? Find our guidelines and submission form\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Front Street intake entrance to the San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Department. (File Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3007,7045,2871,2872,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-454891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-civil-rights","tag-department-of-justice","tag-ice","tag-immigrants","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}