Judge rejects Minnesota request to keep ICE officer jailed in extradition fight with Texas

BROWNSVILLE — A federal judge Wednesday rejected Minnesota’s attempt to keep an immigration officer jailed in South Texas as the state fights to extradite the man to face criminal charges related to a January shooting.

In a lawsuit filed last week, Minnesota officials sought to compel Gov. Greg Abbott to agree to extradite Christian Castro. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer faces four counts of assault after he allegedly fired through a closed door in Minneapolis on Jan. 14 and struck a Venezuelan man in the leg. He is also accused of lying about events leading to the shooting. 

The lawsuit also asked U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., appointed by President Donald Trump, to order Castro held in the Cameron County Jail beyond Thursday while they await Abbott’s decision on the extradition request. 

People awaiting extradition in Texas cannot be held longer than 90 days. Castro, who was arrested in Cameron County on May 29, will reach that deadline Thursday. Minnesota officials expressed concern that if released, the officer would flee and avoid prosecution.

In the Wednesday order, Rodriguez said the threat of flight was not enough to justify holding Castro beyond the legal limit. 

“The Court agrees that Castro’s flight to Mexico would impose a hardship on Minnesota’s prosecutorial efforts,” he wrote. “But that possible outcome does not alter the analysis.”

Although the judge acknowledged that Abbott has considered this extradition request “for an atypically long duration,” he found that Minnesota has not identified any federal law requiring the Texas governor to decide whether to sign the extradition paperwork within a certain time period. 

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said he “strongly disagrees” with the ruling, adding that his office will keep fighting to bring the officer back to face charges in the state.    

“Greg Abbott is turning Texas into a sanctuary state for violent criminals,” he said in a statement. “But regardless of today’s ruling, Christian Castro will not escape justice in Minnesota.”  

Abbott’s spokesperson, Andrew Mahaleris, said the court was correct in rejecting Minnesota’s “absurd claim.”

“The Constitution requires deliberate consideration of extradition requests and tasks Governor Abbott to ‘decide, upon such evidence as he may deem satisfactory’ whether ‘the person demanded is a fugitive,’” he said in a statement. “Today’s order rebuffs Minnesota’s efforts to conscript federal courts into commandeering the authority of Governor Abbott’s office.”

Earlier this week, Abbott told the court that he has not signed the rendition warrant because of “serious doubts” that Castro qualifies as a fugitive, citing media reports that said the ICE officer didn’t flee Minnesota and had instead returned to Texas due to job obligations. 

The governor said he ordered Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden — his former senior adviser — to investigate this issue on July 31, but that inquiry remains pending. During a hearing Tuesday in Rodriguez’s Brownsville courtroom, attorneys for Texas argued that the state was working diligently to make that determination.

Howden’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about his investigation’s timeline.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Minnesota argued Tuesday that how Castro ended up in Texas was irrelevant and that the investigation into whether he is a fugitive has no basis in law.

They also said Abbott has a duty to make Castro available for extradition under the Extradition Clause of the Constitution, which they said is meant to preclude any state from becoming a sanctuary for fugitives of another state.

In his Wednesday order, the judge concluded that federal extradition doesn’t give him the authority to set a time limit for Texas officials to conduct their investigation. He also found that there is “no direct evidence” that Abbott pushed for an investigation to delay the extradition or that Howden’s inquiry would go on for a long time. 

“The threat of an indefinite consideration of Minnesota’s extradition request does not currently exist,” Rodriguez wrote. 

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.