Christian Castro, an ICE agent who prosecutors say shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in January and then lied about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, walks out of the courtroom after his first appearance at the U.S. District Court in Minnesota at the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in St. Paul, Minnesota Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
ST. PAUL (Minnesota Reformer) – Christian Castro, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot a man through the door of a north Minneapolis home in January, was released Thursday evening on conditional bail from Hennepin County Jail, where he was held for state-level charges.
At his first appearance at federal district court in St. Paul on Friday for a separate case, Castro pleaded not guilty to six charges of making false statements, stemming from six alleged lies he told FBI investigators after the shooting.
Castro had appeared in state court in downtown Minneapolis Thursday to face state charges of four counts of second-degree assault as well as one count of falsely reporting a crime.
On Jan. 14, during the peak of Operation Metro Surge, Castro engaged in a car chase with Alfredo Aljorna, ending at Aljorna’s home in north Minneapolis. Castro and another ICE agent had mistaken Aljorna for another Latino man, according to an FBI affidavit. Aljorna exited his car and slipped as he tried to get inside his house, at which point Castro attempted to arrest Aljorna. Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Aljorna’s roommate, tried to help Aljorna, leading to an 11-second scuffle between the three. After both men escaped and ran inside, Castro shot at them with the bullet passing through the front door and hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg before coming to a stop in the wall of a child’s bedroom, according to charging documents.
In an interview in the aftermath of the shooting, Castro told an FBI agent that Sosa-Celis and Aljorna had assaulted him with a broom and a snow shovel in a three-minute fight before Castro opened fire, leading to assault charges against the two men that were dropped after surveillance footage proved Castro’s statements false.
State prosecutors charged Castro in May, and a federal grand jury indicted him in early September. An assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota had been pursuing hefty federal civil rights charges against Castro, but was instructed by Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C. to downgrade the charges. The attorney was then fired, CBS News reported, citing four unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
The state and federal cases are taking place simultaneously. Castro, who had refused to consent to extradition to Minnesota from a Texas jail for months, turned himself in to federal authorities in early September after a federal grand jury indicted him with the six charges. He was released on bond after appearing in federal court in McAllen, Texas, and ordered to appear in federal court in Minnesota for the Friday hearing. Castro drove up to Minnesota from Texas this week, where he was arrested Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
On Thursday, Hennepin County District Judge Paul R. Scoggin set bail at $200,000 if Castro agrees to not possess firearms, not contact witnesses, to be electronically monitored, to sign a waiver of extradition — an agreement to be extradited without a formal hearing in the future — and to surrender his passport to state authorities immediately if he gets it back from federal authorities.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said that she expects Castro to file a motion to move the state case to federal court, which she said her office is prepared to litigate.
Castro was released on conditional bail from state custody at around 6 p.m. Thursday, according to the Hennepin County Sheriff’s jail roster. He wore a black suit and an ankle monitor to federal court Friday, a stark difference from the day prior, when he was still in state custody and appeared in state court in a glass-paneled box and an orange jail uniform.
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