ICE agent charged in Minneapolis shooting during immigration crackdown
An ICE agent was charged after a north Minneapolis shooting, deepening scrutiny of Operation Metro Surge and raising new questions about federal force and oversight.
Criminal charges against a federal immigration agent have pushed Minneapolis’s crackdown into a new phase of accountability, turning a January shooting into a test of how far local prosecutors can go when federal officers are accused of lying about force used on the street.
Christian Castro was charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man who was struck in the thigh on Jan. 14, 2026, in north Minneapolis. A warrant has been issued for Castro’s arrest, and prosecutors say his whereabouts are unknown.
Hennepin County prosecutors say Castro and another officer chased a different man to the apartment duplex where that man and Sosa-Celis lived, then fired through the door while all six occupants inside, including two children, were in the home. Prosecutors say video evidence contradicted the officers’ original account that Sosa-Celis attacked law enforcement with a shovel and broom handle. Federal charges against Sosa-Celis and another man were later dropped.
The case is the second time a federal agent has been criminally charged over conduct tied to Operation Metro Surge, which the Department of Homeland Security described as its largest immigration enforcement operation ever. Earlier, Hennepin County charged ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. in a separate February incident in Minneapolis involving an alleged gun-pointing confrontation. He faced two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon.
The legal fallout has widened beyond the criminal cases. Hennepin County, along with the State of Minnesota and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, sued the federal government in March for access to evidence connected to the Metro Surge shootings. County officials also created a Transparency and Accountability Project in March to collect public evidence of possible unlawful conduct by federal agents.
The scrutiny has been sharpened by other violent episodes tied to the operation, including the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. With charges now filed against Castro, the confrontation between Hennepin County and federal immigration authorities has become a broader fight over force, evidence, and whether agencies can be trusted to investigate themselves.
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