Texas Rangers and federal agents in South Texas arrested a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Friday who is accused of lying about what led up to him shooting a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Minnesota prosecutors last week charged Christian Castro, 52, with five counts, including second-degree assault and filing a false police report in connection with the wounding of a man during an immigration operation in that state. <\/p>\n
The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement that Rangers assisted in the arrest of Castro in Cameron County on the Texas-Mexico border. According to public records, Castro lives in McAllen, in neighboring Hidalgo County.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro,\u201d Mary Moriarty, the Hennepin County attorney, said in a statement.<\/a><\/p>\n The felony charges against Castro stem from a Jan. 14 incident in which ICE and Border Patrol agents pursued undocumented immigrants as part of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown. <\/p>\n Castro is facing three to seven years in prison and fines of $4,200 to $14,000 if convicted of the charges, the charging document shows.<\/p>\n On that night, a Venezuelan man named Alfredo Aljorna led Castro and three other ICE agents on a vehicle chase that ended at his home, according to the charging document filed in a Minnesota court<\/a>. Aljorna later told state investigators that the reason he fled was because the agents were in an unmarked vehicle and he didn\u2019t know who was chasing him.<\/p>\n Still, he managed to enter his house where he and three other adults and three children lived. Castro then fired at the front door, striking Aljorna\u2019s roommate, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, in the leg, according to court documents. After the shooting, Castro told federal investigators that Aljorna and Sosa-Celis attacked him with a shovel and broom to avoid being arrested, according to the court document. <\/p>\n Based on Castro\u2019s statements, federal prosecutors charged Aljorna and Sosa-Celis, both of whom are in the country legally, with assaulting a law enforcement officer. But prosecutors dropped those charges <\/a>after they reviewed footage of the incident that contradicted Castro\u2019s testimony,<\/a> according to court documents. <\/p>\n A surveillance camera operated by local police captured the incident, showing that Aljorna and Sosa-Celis didn\u2019t attack Castro or any other agents, court documents say.<\/p>\n In February, ICE placed Castro on leave. And ICE\u2019s interim director, Todd Lyons, said at the time that Castro was under investigation for appearing to have lied under oath, which is also a federal crime.<\/p>\n But after state prosecutors charged Castro, ICE said in a statement that Minnesota\u2019s prosecution is \u201cunlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Rangers and federal agents in South Texas arrested a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[45717,8077,41111,1724,865,287,27,29,293,28],"class_list":["post-314619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cameron-county","tag-department-of-public-safety","tag-hidalgo-county","tag-immigration","tag-law-enforcement","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}