The Department of Justice has concocted what one former prosecutor described as a “silly” defense for an immigration agent who shot an individual in the leg through a closed door.
Christian Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, faces four counts of second-degree assault and a charge of falsely reporting a crime after he shot a Minneapolis resident named Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg. Sosa-Celis submitted video footage to the court showing that Castro had completely fabricated their altercation, in which Castro claimed that Sosa-Celis and his roommates attacked ICE agents.
Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, argued in a new essay for his Substack, “Talking Feds,” that the DOJ has defended Castro from charges of using unlawful force and then lying about it by acknowledging that Castro is a liar. Even so, the DOJ contends that Castro didn’t commit a crime, despite mountains of evidence suggesting his version of events is untrue.
“So the federal government’s implicit position is that Castro didn’t use unlawful force but that he made up a farrago of lies anyway. On the slightest reflection, that’s just silly,” Litman wrote.
“There is no dispute about Castro’s use of deadly force. It’s on videotape. There likewise is no tenable claim that he was confronting an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury: the victims had run into the house and closed the door. On what possible theory did Castro lie about the whole episode but not use unlawful force?” he added.
Litman also argued that the DOJ’s defense pointed to a darker plot.
“Castro’s lies, plainly, were designed to cover up the unlawfulness of his use of deadly force, which under both Minnesota and federal law requires, in essence, that the officer have an actual and reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” Litman wrote. “His fabrications in fact are vivid evidence that he knew he had none. That’s the defense under state law; federal law confers immunity for officers who were performing an act authorized by federal law and, in doing so, ‘did no more than what was necessary and proper.’”
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