{"id":419545,"date":"2026-08-28T20:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T20:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/419545\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T20:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T20:12:09","slug":"texas-running-interference-for-fugitive-ice-agents-will-have-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/419545\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas running interference for fugitive ICE agents will have consequences."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Executive Dysfunction<\/a>, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law\u2014or how the law is pushing back\u2014and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate\u2019s Jurisprudence team.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been seven months since federal immigration agents touched down in Minnesota with a vengeance, killing two American citizens and violently assaulting countless others in a frenzied pursuit to accomplish President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation agenda. Though the influx of agents eventually left Minnesota, taking their horrific behavior elsewhere<\/a>, state officials have been busy attempting to pursue accountability, filing numerous cases against the federal officers who participated in the raids. Trump\u2019s Justice Department has unsurprisingly been unwilling to work with them, and this week Texas took a page out of that book, refusing Minnesota\u2019s extradition request for an agent charged with four felonies. On Thursday, that officer was released from jail, and it\u2019s likely he may never have to answer for his charges in court.<\/p>\n

In May, Minnesota prosecutors charged Christian Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, with four felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon after he fired a gun into a Minneapolis home back in January knowing there were people inside. Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis<\/a>, a 24-year-old migrant from Venezuela, was shot in the leg but survived. According to state prosecutors, Castro falsely claimed that Sosa-Celis and another man had attacked an ICE agent with a broom and shovel, and that he had simply acted in self defense. A nationwide warrant was issued for Castro\u2019s arrest, and within weeks Texas law-enforcement officers found him. A judge ordered him detained pending extradition proceedings, prompting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to send Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a formal request for Castro\u2019s extradition.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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For three months, Abbott did not respond to this request. Instead, he asked the Texas secretary of state to consider whether Castro was a fugitive, and he refused to reach a decision on extraditing him until that question was answered. This was perhaps an effort to run out the clock, as Texas law provides that extradition detentions last no more than 90 days. Castro hit that limit on Thursday. Minnesota sued Texas<\/a> to compel Abbott to comply with its extradition request, noting that over the past five years it had sought 11 extraditions from Texas, each of which was fulfilled, on average, in less than 30 days. It also argued that if Castro were released, he would probably flee to Mexico; his call logs from jail revealed that he spoke with a woman, whom he promised to marry, about purchasing a house there. If that does in fact happen, it could take years for Minnesota\u2019s extradition request to be heard by Mexican courts, which would ultimately decide the issue.<\/p>\n

Within a week of Minnesota\u2019s filing suit against Texas, the DOJ began to intervene. On Tuesday, CNN reported<\/a> that the department was actively weighing whether to charge Castro for the same incident. A DOJ spokesperson said that no decision had yet been made but noted that its civil rights division has had conversations with Minnesota prosecutors. Back in May, when the state first revealed the charges against Castro, the DOJ deemed them a \u201cpolitical stunt\u201d and characterized the case as \u201ca federal issue [that] must be handled at the federal level.\u201d Still, until this week, the feds had kept mum about the case.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the day before Castro would hit his 90-day detention limit in Texas, a federal judge issued a decision on Minnesota\u2019s lawsuit, concluding that he could not prevent<\/a> a Texas county sheriff from releasing Castro or compel Abbott to sign the extradition warrant Minnesota sought. Because Abbott said he had not made a final decision on the extradition request, and because the U.S. Constitution mandates that states deliver fugitives upon proper demand\u2014though it does not provide a time frame for a response\u2014the judge\u2019s hands were tied. However, he did flag that Abbott\u2019s defense, which hinges on the question of whether Castro is a fugitive, is suspect. \u201cThe Court has doubts that caselaw supports the construction of \u2018fugitive\u2019 that Texas is considering,\u201d he wrote in a footnote. He added that the Supreme Court, back in 1885, had defined a fugitive as a person who commits a crime in violation of a state\u2019s laws and seeks to be subjected to its criminal processes despite leaving its jurisdiction and being found within the territory of another.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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The politics of Castro\u2019s case are simply too obvious to ignore. Abbott is one of Trump\u2019s most loyal state-level lackeys<\/a>, publicly supporting the president\u2019s deployment of Texas National Guard members to blue states. He was also the first governor to comply with Trump\u2019s demand to redistrict his state midcycle to earn more Republican House seats for this year\u2019s midterm elections. With Castro, Abbott has found another way to please the president, refusing to work with a blue state that Trump has long antagonized on an issue that blew up in Trump\u2019s face earlier this year. It\u2019s worth noting as well that Abbott is running for reelection this fall for his fourth consecutive gubernatorial term.<\/p>\n

None of this is normal, though. Typically, state and federal officials work together to conduct joint investigations, share evidence, and pursue justice regardless of political affiliation. The Trump administration has completely obliterated this norm, refusing to hand over evidence in the high-profile murders of Alex Pretti<\/a> and Renee Nicole Good<\/a> by ICE agents, while falsely claiming that federal agents have absolute immunity from prosecution, regardless of their behavior. The impact of this is evident in Texas today, and it\u2019s likely to spread all across the country so long as the White House continues to pursue its reckless immigration agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,1724,31812,11728,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-419545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-immigration","tag-jurisprudence","tag-minnesota","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419545","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=419545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}