By Jonathan Allen
Aug 18 (Reuters) – Minnesota sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday for refusing to extradite a federal immigration agent facing assault charges for shooting a Venezuelan man in the leg in Minneapolis during last winter’s deportation surge.
Christian Castro, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, has been in a Texas county jail near the border with Mexico since Texas Rangers arrested him on May 29 on a warrant issued by a Minnesota judge.
Castro is wanted in Minnesota to face charges for wounding Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis on January 14, at the height of U.S. President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign in Minnesota, which drew weeks of protests.
The case highlights the partisan divide over Trump’s immigration policies. Abbott, a fellow Republican, has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s deportation efforts. Minnesota’s Democratic leaders, including Governor Tim Walz, have condemned Trump’s surge of armed ICE patrols in Minneapolis and other cities, during which immigration agents killed two American citizens in January.
The U.S. Constitution and federal law require states to extradite people wanted for crimes in another state. But Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who filed the lawsuit, said Abbott was “refusing to honor the extradition request” sent by Walz in June knowing that, under Texas law, Castro must be released from jail after 90 days, which would elapse next week, if Abbott has not signed the rendition warrant.
“Christian Castro could walk free from jail in Texas and flee justice in Minnesota, including by leaving the country,” Ellison told reporters.
Later on Tuesday, Abbott said he was not signing Minnesota’s rendition warrant because he mistrusted Walz.
“I don’t trust Tim Walz on anything, let alone something like this,” Abbott said. “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,” he said, referring to multiple unrelated state and federal investigations of individual Minnesotans and nonprofit groups for defrauding federal welfare funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
AN UNUSUAL PROSECUTION
It is rare for county or state prosecutors to charge federal law enforcement officials, but Castro, 52, is the second federal immigration agent to be charged this year by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the chief state prosecutor in Minneapolis.
She charged Castro with four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and falsely reporting a crime after his superiors at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security learned his account that Sosa-Celis and others attacked him with a snow shovel and broom was disproved by video evidence. Federal prosecutors dismissed their criminal charges against Sosa-Celis and DHS suspended Castro.
Castro could not be reached for comment and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer.
White House officials have defended the conduct of ICE agents and said, incorrectly, that they have immunity from state prosecutions.
Ellison filed the lawsuit in federal court in Brownsville in Texas, and it asks a judge to order Abbott to sign the rendition warrant for Castro, which Minnesota says is a “mandatory obligation” under the U.S. Constitution and federal and Texas law.
Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Treviño, who has custody of Castro in his jail, is also named as a respondent in the lawsuit, which asks that he be ordered not to release free Castro before he is extradited. Treviño declined to comment.
Sosa-Celis’ attorney, Robin Wolpert, wrote in an email that if Abbott did not sign the extradition papers there was a serious risk that Castro could flee to Mexico.
“This would be a double injustice for Mr. Sosa Celis and a profound blow to the rule of law,” she wrote.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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