BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Wednesday refused to order Texas to extradite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer charged with shooting a man and lying about it during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in an order that he couldn\u2019t prevent a county sheriff from releasing Christian Castro or order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant.<\/p>\n
The Cameron County sheriff said he would release Castro on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. <\/p>\n
Castro is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the leg. Prosecutors say Castro also falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.<\/p>\n
After a Minnesota judge issued a nationwide warrant for Castro\u2019s arrest in May, authorities, including Minnesota\u2019s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, arrested Castro in Cameron County on May 29. Minnesota authorities have sought his extradition since his arrest, but he remains in custody<\/a> in Brownsville, Texas, a city bordering Mexico.<\/p>\n Under Texas law and barring extradition, Castro must be released after 90 days of detention, which is Thursday.<\/p>\n Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a request for a temporary restraining order last week seeking to block Castro\u2019s release or to order his return to Minnesota.<\/p>\n Texas attorneys on Tuesday argued the judge could not rule on a decision that\u2019s still pending. Abbott has not denied the extradition. Instead he is waiting for the outcome of an internal state investigation considering whether Castro was legally a \u201cfugitive\u201d under the Extradition Clause, the lawyers said.<\/p>\n The judge wrote in Wednesday\u2019s order that the court can\u2019t yet step in. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Court concludes that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction because the case is not ripe for adjudication,\u201d the order read. \u201cMinnesota cannot premise its causes of action on the allegation that Governor Abbott may violate those authorities in the future; it must prove that a violation has already occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge said in his order that the extradition laws do not outline how long the Texas governor can take to make that decision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sign up for Morning Wire: Ellison said in a statement that his office would keep litigating the case but didn\u2019t specify what it would do next.<\/p>\n \u201cI respectfully but strongly disagree with the court\u2019s order, which nonetheless acknowledges that Christian Castro is a flight risk, that Minnesota will be harmed if he is allowed to flee to Mexico, and that Governor Abbott\u2019s consideration of Minnesota\u2019s extradition request is of \u2018an atypically long duration\u2019 \u2014 to say the least,\u201d Ellison said in a statement.<\/p>\n Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose office handles prosecutions in Minneapolis, said at a new conference that Abbott was unfairly harboring the former ICE agent.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Christian Castro walks out of the door of the jail tomorrow and disappears into Mexico, it will be the fault of one person: Governor Greg Abbott,\u201d Moriarty said.<\/p>\n Abbott\u2019s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, welcomed the ruling and said it was the governor\u2019s duty to carefully consider the merits of extradition requests.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s order rebuffs Minnesota\u2019s efforts to conscript federal courts into commandeering the authority of Governor Abbott\u2019s office,\u201d Mahaleris said in a statement.<\/p>\n Abbott said last week<\/a> he would not respond to the extradition request, citing the ongoing investigation into fraud<\/a> in government social service programs in Minnesota, which President Donald Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown<\/a> there.<\/p>\n Minnesota officials say Castro could flee the country, citing calls he made from jail to a woman in Mexico, talking \u201cabout marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n The judge conceded that Castro could flee the country but added that \u201cthe threat of injury by itself does not create an issue ripe for adjudication.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Wednesday refused to order Texas to extradite an Immigration and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[81792,5703,108596,145,51861,145307,490,392,5603,1724,113131,131530,2277,108593,1468,11728,42025,2899,3346,27,29,28,1760,1499],"class_list":["post-418097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-andrew-mahaleris","tag-central-america","tag-christian-castro","tag-donald-trump","tag-extradition","tag-fernando-rodriguez","tag-general-news","tag-greg-abbott","tag-gun-violence","tag-immigration","tag-julio-cesar-sosa-celis","tag-keith-ellison","tag-latin-america","tag-mary-moriarty","tag-mexico","tag-minnesota","tag-mn-state-wire","tag-prisons","tag-shootings","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418097","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=418097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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