ICE agent federally charged with lying over shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Whitney Wild, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has been federally charged with lying about the events leading up to his shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg earlier this year, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The charges against ICE officer Christian Castro are not yet publicly available, but a person familiar with the matter told CNN that he is facing several counts of making false statements.

This is the first time the Justice Department has charged an officer for conduct that occurred on-duty during highly publicized immigration operations nationwide. Local prosecutors in Minnesota had already charged Castro with second-degree assault and making a false report earlier this year.

CNN attempted to reach a lawyer for Castro for comment.

The Justice Department is still considering whether to bring civil rights charges against Castro, one of the sources said.

Castro also faces the separate state charges in Minnesota. He was released from a Texas jail last week after the governor there declined to immediately approve his extradition to Minnesota.

Federal prosecutors initially charged 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, whom Castro shot, and another man with attacking an ICE officer with a snow shovel and broom stick. But those charges were dropped after investigators reviewed surveillance footage and other material from the incident that conflicted with Castro’s account.

Castro and a second agent were soon placed on administrative leave. Federal prosecutors told the judge overseeing the case against Sosa-Celis that the agents had made “false statements” under oath, and former ICE Director Todd Lyons said later the Justice Department was investigating the “untruthful statements.”

Prosecutors in Minnesota, who charged Castro in May, allege that he shot Sosa-Celis in the back of the leg through the door of Sosa-Celis’ apartment.

The shooting occurred after ICE officers had attempted to pull over a truck belonging to an undocumented immigrant named Joffre Barrera, the state alleged. Sosa-Celis’ cousin and DoorDash driver, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, was behind the wheel and drove off from the officers, they said.

According to Sosa-Celis, Aljorna ran from the truck and was tackled steps away from Sosa-Celis’ apartment by an ICE agent. Sosa-Celis called for Aljorna to get inside and, once both cousins were behind the door, a shot rang out, Sosa-Celis said.

“I closed the door and as I was locking it, I heard the shot, and that’s when I realized I had been shot in the leg,” Sosa-Celis told CNN at the time during a Facebook livestream from a hospital.

Color of law cases are often very complicated, and have historically taken months or years to bring. It took the department nearly a year to bring a civil rights case against Derek Chauvin related to George Floyd’s death, and more than two years for the department to charge Louisiana Metro Police Department officers connected to Breonna Taylor’s killing.

Earlier this week, a federal prosecutor working on the case told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims that Justice Department officials blocked the push to bring a more serious civil rights charge against Castro for the shooting, ProPublica reported on Wednesday.

A person familiar with the matter told CNN a formal decision on whether to bring those civil rights charges has not been made. The prosecutor, Matthew Evans, was fired and is under investigation for alleged obstruction of a grand jury probe, according to the person.

An automatic response from Evan’s department email said he was “on leave.” CNN made multiple other attempts to reach him.

“Mr. Castro has been indicted for making false statements. But he made them to cover up the fact that he shot my client through the door of an occupied house without a self-defense justification,” Sosa-Celis’ lawyer, Robin M. Wolpert, said in a statement to CNN. “Although the evidence strongly supports civil rights charges, the federal government has grossly undercharged this case. Mr. Sosa Celis wants Mr. Castro to be held fully accountable for his crimes.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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