ICE Agent Fired Shot Into Home With Toddlers Inside, Then Lied: Federal Indictment

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — A newly unsealed federal indictment accuses a Minnesota ICE deportation officer of inventing an elaborate cover story, complete with two made-up attackers and a broom and snow shovel snatched off a porch, to explain why he fired his gun into a duplex where two toddlers were home.

Christian Jeremiah Castro, 52, of Texas, was indicted Sept. 2 on six counts of lying to the FBI and made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate in the Southern District of Texas the next day. He faces up to five years in prison on each count.

Read the full federal indictment here.

President Donald Trump's own DOJ brought the case, and it's stacked on top of a Hennepin County charge Castro already faces.

Castro had spent about eight years as a Border Patrol agent before joining ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in September 2025, according to the indictment.

The shooting happened Jan. 14, when Castro and his partner tried to stop a vehicle driven by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man identified in the indictment as A.A. A.A. drove off, then ditched the car and ran.

Castro chased him on foot to the front yard of a duplex on 24th Avenue North in Minneapolis and tried to arrest him there.

A 24-year-old Venezuelan man who lived in the duplex, identified as J.S.-C., stepped in to help.

The entire scuffle among the three men, prosecutors say, lasted about 11 seconds before A.A. broke free and both men ran for the duplex's front door.

As the door swung shut behind them, Castro stood up, drew his service weapon and fired a single round through it.

The bullet hit J.S.-C. in the leg, requiring medical treatment, then passed through the entryway and lodged in a downstairs wall. Two mothers and two one-year-old children were all inside the home when the shot was fired.

That night, an FBI agent interviewed Castro.

According to the indictment, he claimed an unknown man grabbed a red broom off the porch and beat him with it, that a second unknown man then grabbed a black snow shovel and joined in, and that A.A. himself later got up and hit him with the broom too, all while Castro was pinned on the ground.

Castro said he only fired after the attackers dropped their weapons and ran, and that the whole fight lasted roughly three minutes.

Prosecutors say none of it happened. The indictment states flatly that no one hit Castro with a broom or a shovel, that no third man was ever present, and that the actual encounter lasted 11 seconds, not three minutes.

It also directly contradicts Castro's claim that he was lying on his back when he opened fire, alleging he was standing.

The federal charge comes days after Castro walked free from a Texas jail, where he had been held on a Minnesota extradition request.

Gov. Greg Abbott declined to sign the paperwork before a legal deadline forced Castro's release Aug. 27.

Minnesota had charged Castro in Hennepin County District Court with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and another Venezuelan immigrant of attacking Castro with a broom handle and a snow shovel before he opened fire.

Federal prosecutors dropped those charges after surveillance video appeared to contradict the officers' account, prompting the investigation that led to this week's charge.

The new charge also follows a ProPublica report that Justice Department officials blocked a federal prosecutor's effort to bring a more serious civil rights charge against Castro over the shooting.

The shooting has fueled monthslong tension between Minnesota officials and Texas over Castro's custody.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pressed Abbott for weeks to sign the extradition papers before Castro's release, and Ellison has said Minnesota will keep pursuing the case.