Texas Judge Declines to Order Extradition of ICE Agent Charged in Minneapolis Shooting

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. refused Wednesday to order Texas to extradite Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro to Minnesota, and declined to keep him in jail past the state’s 90-day extradition hold. Castro was released Thursday morning from the Cameron County Jail in Brownsville. Sheriff Manuel Trevino’s office said he left shortly after 7 a.m. local time.

Castro, 52, faces four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime in Hennepin County. Minnesota prosecutors say that on Jan. 14, during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, he fired through the front door of a home and wounded 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, in the leg. They say Castro then reported under oath that Sosa-Celis and another man attacked an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel, an account prosecutors say nearby video disproved. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced the charges in May. A Minnesota judge issued a nationwide warrant. Texas Rangers arrested Castro in Cameron County on May 29. He lives in Texas and did not waive extradition.

Gov. Tim Walz sent Gov. Greg Abbott a requisition on June 2. Under Texas law, a person held only for extradition must be released after 90 days if no rendition warrant is signed. That deadline fell Thursday. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Abbott last week in the Southern District of Texas, arguing the Constitution’s Extradition Clause and the federal Extradition Act impose a mandatory duty and that delay past the 90-day mark would let Castro walk. Minnesota said it feared he would flee to Mexico. Ellison asked the court to compel Abbott to sign a rendition warrant and to bar Trevino from releasing Castro until then.

Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, issued a 13-page order finding the dispute not ripe. “The record reflects only that Governor Abbott has neither agreed nor refused to sign the rendition warrant as to Castro,” he wrote. Abbott had directed the Texas secretary of state to investigate the demand and report whether Castro “ought to be surrendered.” Texas lawyers argued the question included whether Castro qualified as a “fugitive” under the Extradition Clause. The judge wrote that Minnesota “cannot premise its causes of action on the allegation that Governor Abbott may violate those authorities in the future; it must prove that a violation has already occurred.” He found no statute or constitutional provision requiring Abbott to finish that review on a court-set clock, and no basis to order Trevino to ignore the 90-day limit. He accepted that flight to Mexico “would impose a hardship on Minnesota’s prosecutorial efforts” but said that possibility did not change the analysis.

Abbott has not signed the warrant. At an Austin event last week he said he does not trust Walz “on anything, let alone something like this,” and tied his response to Minnesota’s welfare-fraud investigations: “It’s time for Minnesota to step up and repay the United States of America and Americans for all the fraud that they’ve committed in their state through federal programs,” and that he would “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.” Ellison, after the ruling, said he disagreed and would keep litigating. “Greg Abbott is turning Texas into a sanctuary state for violent criminals,” he said. Minnesota said Walz had processed Texas extradition requests in days during the same period. Abbott’s office has not announced a final decision on the rendition warrant. Castro’s whereabouts after release were not disclosed. The Minnesota charges remain pending.