ICE Agent Released From Texas Jail After Minnesota Loses Court Fight

"The state had sought to have the agent extradited from Texas to answer charges in Minneapolis related to an on-duty shooting that wounded an immigrant.

Aug. 27, 2026Updated 9:22 a.m. ET

U.S. Immigration Crackdown

Christian Castro was one of thousands of agents sent to Minnesota in the winter as part of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

An immigration officer facing state charges in connection with a shooting in Minneapolis was released from jail on Thursday after Republican officials in Texas prevailed in an extradition battle with their Democratic counterparts in Minnesota. It is unclear whether the agent will ultimately answer those charges in court.

The officer, Christian Castro of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been jailed for the last three months in Cameron County, Texas, while Minnesota officials sought to have him sent north to face assault charges related to a shooting in January that wounded a Venezuelan immigrant.

Sheriff Manuel Trevino of Cameron County said Mr. Castro was released just before 7 a.m. local time.

The case has tested the limits of state powers in an era of deep political mistrust.

It is rare for federal agents to face state criminal charges for on-duty conduct, and the Trump administration has argued that the charges Minnesota prosecutors have filed against Mr. Castro are illegitimate. It is also exceedingly rare for one governor not to act on a request from another to extradite a criminal defendant, as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has done.

Because Mr. Castro did not agree to leave Texas, where he lives, Minnesota officials needed Mr. Abbott to approve a request to extradite him. But Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has so far declined to act on the request from Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat. Because Texas law limits detention in extradition cases to 90 days, Mr. Castro had to be freed on Thursday.

Minnesota officials have said they were worried that Mr. Castro would flee to Mexico if he was released, and they filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to force the Texas governor to act. But Mr. Abbott’s lawyers said he needed more time to determine whether Mr. Castro was eligible for extradition. The judge sided with Texas on Wednesday, finding that there was no proof that Mr. Abbott was acting in bad faith.

Mr. Castro was among the thousands of federal agents sent to Minnesota last winter as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which resulted in violent clashes between agents and residents, thousands of arrests and three shootings.

Mr. Castro was accused of shooting a Venezuelan man, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, on Jan. 14 after a long car chase and short foot pursuit with Mr. Sosa-Celis’s roommate.

State prosecutors said Mr. Castro fired through the door of a home, striking Mr. Sosa-Celis in the leg. They charged Mr. Castro in mid-May in state court in Minneapolis with four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Mr. Castro, who returned to Texas shortly after the shooting, did not travel to Minnesota to face the charges. He was arrested in Texas in late May on a warrant from Minnesota.

Mr. Castro has not publicly addressed the charges against him, and he did not respond to requests for comment through a jail messaging system in recent months.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, federal officials backed Mr. Castro and accused Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate, who is also from Venezuela, of engaging in a sustained attack with a broom and a shovel.

Days after the shooting, Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate were charged in federal court with assaulting a law enforcement officer. But federal prosecutors dismissed that case in February after investigators determined, based on a video of the encounter, that agents had likely lied about the events that led to the shooting.

Federal officials have said they were investigating the agents involved in the shooting, though no federal charges have been announced.

Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.

Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. He welcomes tips and can be reached at elondono.81 on Signal."

Georgia Supreme Court says it will no longer handle the bulk of state murder appeals

 

 

ICE Arrests Soar as People With No Criminal Record Are Increasingly Targeted

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 Summary

“ICE arrests reached record highs in July, targeting mostly people without criminal records. Daily arrests approach 2,000 under Markwayne Mullin, aided by expanded agents and 287(g) partnerships. Detentions and deportations rise, with flights peaking at 329.

​

Aug. 26, 2026

July ’26

1,600

avg. daily

arrests

A surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke.

A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, an analysis of newly released federal data shows. The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent.

ICE arrests of people with no criminal history have risen fastest

No criminal charges

Mullin

confirmed

Pending

charges

Trump takes

office

Violent conviction

Note: Chart shows the seven-day rolling average of ICE arrests of people the agency recorded as having a past criminal conviction, criminal charges or neither. Violent crimes were determined based on categories from the National Crime Information Center.

Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the administration was keeping its promises to arrest and deport criminals and that anyone in the country illegally was a target for enforcement.

The new data contains details on every ICE arrest through Aug. 5 and offers the fullest picture yet of how the agency’s activities have shifted since public backlash forced a retreat from the aggressive tactics seen in Minneapolis early this year. It was obtained by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group, through a public records lawsuit and analyzed by The New York Times.

After his confirmation this spring, the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, promised quieter but more effective enforcement. ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests.

“They have more officers, more money, more detention space, more local partners and better systems,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official. “And they’re finally putting all the pieces together to build out this deportation machine.”

A wider focus 

Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling.

But the surge was strongest in Florida and Texas, two states with large unauthorized immigrant populations and leaders friendly to the Trump administration’s crackdown.

July arrests were highest along the southern border

ICE arrests per 100,000 residents

Note: Map shows arrests by state and territory, and by ICE field office in areas of California, New York and Texas, where more detailed data is available.

ICE is making more than 380 arrests a day in Texas and more than 230 a day in Florida, with each state up by more than 100 arrests a day from the spring.

All the same, the increase has affected states led both by Republicans and by Democrats. New Jersey and New Mexico have seen arrests double, despite both states passing laws this year that restrict government cooperation with ICE.

More agents, more arrests

ICE appears to be hitting new arrest records in a couple of ways: The agency has hired thousands more agents — growing to 29,000 employees in June, up from about 21,000 when Mr. Trump took office, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. And it has relied more on state and local law enforcement partners.

ICE has rapidly expanded a program to deputize local police officers to arrest immigrants. The share of people detained through the program, known as 287(g), is now around 14 percent, the data shows.

Local partners are carrying out a growing share of ICE arrests

Notes: Chart shows the seven-day rolling average of ICE arrests and the share with the arrest method labeled as “287(g) program.”

Florida has tallied at least 15,000 arrests through the program under Mr. Trump, the data shows, and Texas has notched nearly 10,000. But the program has been particularly important in smaller states like Wyoming and West Virginia, where ICE’s presence is more limited. The share of 287(g) arrests in both states is now more than 50 percent.

Detentions and deportations rise

Under Mr. Mullin’s tenure, the number of people in ICE detention initially declined but has slowly ticked back up.

The agency has not yet reached its stated goal of 100,000 detention beds, but with several new detention facilities opening this fall — and the possibility of reviving a plan to convert warehouses into detention centers — it appears poised to expand detention significantly in the next year.

ICE detention population ticks back up

66,000 people in detention

Notes: The chart shows the number of people in ICE detention each day.

Deportations have averaged well over 1,000 people a day since last summer, and there are signs that they are picking up speed. The number of deportation flights began rising in the spring, and in July reached a record of at least 329 flights out of the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a tracking effort run by Human Rights First.“