Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed a lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, seeking to compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent charged with shooting a man and subsequently fabricating a justification for the incident. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, asks a judge to order the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, to prevent ICE agent Christian Castro from being released and to compel Abbott to sign an extradition warrant.
Castro, 52, was arrested in Texas in May on charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime. Minnesota officials allege that on Jan. 14, Castro fired a weapon through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg. Prosecutors claim Castro then falsely reported that Sosa-Celis and another man attacked an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Ellison expressed concern that Castro could be released from jail in Texas as early as next week, potentially as early as Aug. 26, under Texas law, 90 days after his detention. If released, Ellison warned, Castro could flee to Mexico from the border town where he is being held. The lawsuit states that Castro has reportedly been discussing marriage and purchasing property in Mexico with a woman while in jail. Such a departure, Ellison argued, could make it difficult or impossible to locate and re-arrest Castro due to complex international extradition processes.
Abbott, however, stated Tuesday that he has no immediate intention of responding to Minnesota's extradition requests. He cited ongoing investigations into fraud within Minnesota's government social service programs, a justification that President Donald Trump previously used to support his immigration crackdown in the state. "I will not respond to them at all until they step up and do what’s right and they acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place," Abbott said during a news conference.
Minnesota officials have been in communication with Abbott's office, according to Ellison, but he characterized the situation as a refusal to honor the extradition request. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty stated that the lawsuit should have been unnecessary, as jail officials and prosecutors in Texas have been cooperative, and extradition is typically not a contentious issue. She also noted that Texas has extradited three unrelated defendants to Minnesota without incident since Castro's arrest.
The lawsuit references a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling asserting that compliance with the Constitution's extradition clause is mandatory and does not offer discretion to the governor of the holding state. According to Peter E. Larsen, an assistant professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, this legal principle is straightforward, and Abbott's rationale for withholding extradition, linking it to unrelated fraud cases, further strengthens Minnesota's argument. Larsen expressed doubt that courts would consider such a basis legitimate for noncompliance.
Castro and another ICE officer were involved in a chase that led to the shooting at an apartment duplex in Minneapolis. The federal Department of Homeland Security has called Moriarty's prosecution of Castro "unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt," asserting that only federal authorities have jurisdiction in such cases. This stance mirrors previous federal positions during investigations into other fatal shootings involving federal agents in Minneapolis, where Moriarty also had to pursue legal action to obtain evidence from federal authorities.