A Texas court has set a $200,000 bond for Christian Castro, the ICE agent charged in a Minneapolis shooting case, even as he remains jailed in Texas while waiting for extradition to Minnesota.
The bond decision, relayed Thursday by Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, gives Castro a path to leave custody if he posts bail, though he would still have to appear in Minnesota for arraignment. Saenz said his office had received information that Hennepin County District Court set the amount.
Castro was arrested Friday in Harlingen, Texas, after being charged with four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime. The charges are tied to a shooting that wounded Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis on the night of Jan. 14, after he fled a traffic stop by federal immigration agents and retreated to his home.
That shooting has been described in sharply different ways by federal officials and in court records. The Department of Homeland Security initially defended it as a use of force and said the ICE agent chasing Sosa-Celis had been attacked by three people with a shovel and broom handles for three minutes. But video cited in the case shows Sosa-Celis falling while running to the front door of his house before the agent caught up and briefly struggled with him on the ground, and a second man dropping a snow shovel and going inside.
An FBI affidavit described Castro as being beaten three-on-one and exhausted, alone, on the ground and in fear for his safety. Medical records cited in a criminal complaint said he suffered no demonstrable trauma beyond a scrape on his left hand. The U.S. Department of Justice later dropped charges against Sosa-Celis and a second man charged in the incident.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has said the four assault charges correspond to four adult victims inside the home. Castro was initially denied bond after his arrest, and attorney Salvador Garcia said he could be released if he pays, but would still need to show up in Minnesota for his arraignment. Garcia said Castro was in the Rio Grande Valley as part of his job obligations.
The case now turns on whether Castro posts bond in Texas or stays jailed until Minnesota takes him into custody. Homeland Security has separately called lying under oath a serious federal offense and described the charges as unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt, a sign the dispute over what happened inside the north Minneapolis home is far from settled.
