MINNEAPOLIS — A federal immigration officer charged with shooting and wounding a Venezuelan man in January and lying about the circumstances to investigators made a brief initial appearance Thursday before a Minnesota judge after state authorities arrested him ahead of a separate hearing in federal court.
During Thursday’s hearing, Judge Paul Scoggin granted Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro bond. Castro wore an orange jumpsuit and appeared behind a glass enclosure.
His attorney, Daniel Gerdts, declined to comment.
Castro was being held without bond after the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrested him Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis on state charges of assault and false reporting of a crime stemming from the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Scoggin set bail at $400,000 with no conditions and $200,000 with conditions.
Castro also faces federal charges stemming from the shooting, which occurred during a federal immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area. Prosecutors say Castro falsely told investigators he had been attacked with a broom and a shovel.
Arrest months after Minnesota charged him
Castro’s arrest by Minnesota authorities and appearance in state court followed a dispute between Minnesota prosecutors and Texas’ governor over Minnesota’s attempts to extradite Castro from his home state to face the state charges. One of the conditions Scoggin set for the lower bail amount for Castro was that he not fight extradition should he be released.
The lead prosecutor for the county handling the state case told reporters after the hearing that “Castro invented a story to justify shooting through a front door into a house with multiple people in it.”
“His appearance in a Hennepin County courtroom today is a critical step in our efforts to hold him accountable for that shooting,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said during a news conference.
Federal case also accuses Castro of lying
The next court hearing for Castro is scheduled for Friday. That hearing will be in federal court in St. Paul and involves the federal case in which he is charged with making false statements to investigators regarding the shooting. Castro’s defense attorneys in the federal case have said he plans to plead not guilty.
It’s the first Justice Department prosecution of a federal officer for actions taken during this year’s massive Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of agents to the Twin Cities and led to sweeping protests, arrests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers.
In both the federal and state cases against Castro, prosecutors say he shot Sosa-Celis in the leg while firing through the front door of a Minneapolis home. They say Castro later falsely reported he had been attacked with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Trump administration says only federal authorities have jurisdiction
Minnesota authorities have battled with President Trump’s administration over who should handle any charges against Castro. The Department of Homeland Security has called Minnesota’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction.
Minnesota charged Castro months before his federal indictment. He was arrested in Texas in May on the Minnesota charges. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month refused to sign an extradition warrant to hand him over to Minnesota authorities. He was released in Texas and soon after was indicted on the federal charges. He then turned himself in to federal authorities and returned to Minnesota on his own.
Sullivan and Bynum write for the Associated Press. Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga.
MEXICO CITY — He’s been called the “MAGA man” of Latin America, a brash political provocateur whose social media assaults boosted right-wing campaigns from his native Argentina to Central America.
His career as political consultant and co-founder of an ultra-right online outlet made him a rich man and helped elect Trump-aligned politicians across the region. The Economist gave him the “MAGA Man” label, while political commentators gave him another nickname — the “Steve Bannon of Latin America” — a nod to the longtime Trump ally and advisor.
Now, however, Fernando Cerimedo, 45, sits in a maximum-security prison in Bolivia, accused of masterminding a murder-for-hire plot: The attempted femicide of his pregnant mistress, Nadia Beller, 33, a Bolivian lawyer and activist.
It’s a stunning collapse for a onetime ad man with a dodgy reputation who rose to become the go-to digital campaign guru for Latin America’s ascendant right wing. Cerimedo’s signature boasts, exaggerations and peddling of false election-fraud narratives reflected those of his political model, President Trump.
Cerimedo also is another example of how right-wing political operatives outside the United States — as recently in Colombia and Germany — have adopted Trumpian tactics and messaging.
The fall of the “King Midas of the Latin American right,” said Daniel Matamala, a prominent Chilean journalist, stunned “the ecosystem of fake news, bots, trolls and disinformation that has taken this region by storm in recent years.” Speaking on his podcast, Matamala added, “The name of Cerimedo looms like a ghost over the summit of the radical right.”
The Aug. 17 attack on Beller was a seemingly well-planned ambush that was captured by security cameras, the grainy images widely disseminated on social media.
One of two would-be assassins dressed as fast-food deliverymen pulled out a pistol and shot Beller point blank outside a hotel in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. She fell to the ground and, according to her account, feigned death. The next day, at dawn, Cerimedo was arrested as he was about to board a plane to Buenos Aires.
Cerimedo set up the hit, prosecutors charge, in a nefarious attempt at damage control. Beller had threatened to expose his alleged criminal behavior and physically abusive behavior toward her while revealing Cerimedo, a married man with two children, as the father of her unborn child.
Cerimedo is also under investigation for alleged illegal enrichment and potential links to cocaine trafficking.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
Even before Cerimedo’s arrest, Latin American journalists had begun unmasking Cerimedo as a prodigious purveyor of fake news — about himself. New reports revealed that his frequent boasts about U.S. connections — that he attended Harvard, trained with U.S. Navy SEALs, worked in the Obama White House — were fanciful.
“He certainly exaggerated things,” said Damian Merlo, a Miami-based consultant who worked with Cerimedo on the 2023 campaign of Argentine President Javier Milei, a Trump favorite. “I never really got the impression that Cerimedo was ‘MAGA’s man in Latin America.’ The guy could hardly speak English! But that’s how he sold himself.”
Many times, the sales pitch worked. It was Cerimedo who helped broker then-candidate Milei’s celebrated 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson, at the time a Trump confidant, an appearance that thrust Milei into the international spotlight.
Like Milei, Cerimedo seemed to relish any proximity to Trump-land.
In February, at the inaugural “Hispanic Prosperity Gala” — a right-wing pep rally held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — Cerimedo was honored as “Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year.’” From the podium, he spoke of Latin America’s “culture war” and the need to ensure that “the left never again returns” to governments that have elected conservative leaders.
Switching to heavily accented English, Cerimedo gave a shout-out to Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, whom Cerimedo thanked for “believing [in] me all the time and giving me your technology.”
Parscale declined to comment.
Fernando Cerimedo, an advisor to the National Party, points at a map of Honduras on Dec. 1, 2025, one day after voters went to the polls to elect Nasry Asfura president.
(Moises Castillo / Associated Press)
Both Cerimedo and Parscale were involved in last year’s campaign that resulted in the election of Honduran President Nasry Asfura, whom Trump backed publicly.
Last year, Cerimedo was a key player in the election of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, the center-right, U.S.-educated son of a former president who transitioned from Marxist firebrand to moderate. The ascension of Paz broke almost two decades of leftist rule by the Movement for Socialism party of ex-President Evo Morales.
Cerimedo had no official capacity in Paz’s government, but he enjoyed insider status. He accompanied Paz in March to Trump’s anti-narco “Shield of the Americas” summit, a confab of mostly conservative leaders at Trump’s Doral resort in south Florida.
Among the items found in searches of Cerimedo-linked properties, authorities say, was a business card listing him as Paz’s “chief adviser” — a nonexistent post.
“Mr. Cerimedo never had the authorization to represent … the presidency, the government or my family,” a deeply discomfited Paz said in Facebook message last month.
How exactly Cerimedo got into politics — and how he became a right-wing rabble-rouser — remains somewhat opaque. According to media accounts, he worked a series of uninspiring jobs — including stints as a taxi driver, a schoolteacher and an employee of insurance and computer firms — before veering into advertising. In 2019, he assisted the campaigns of several leftist Peronist candidates in provincial races in Argentina, and later founded his own consultancy, Numen.
Cerimedo first gained prominence in neighboring Brazil. That’s where he championed false election-fraud narratives following the narrow reelection defeat in 2022 of President Jair Bolsonaro — a MAGA stalwart — in his reelection bid against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist. Cerimedo’s “Brazil Was Stolen” livestream exacerbated the sense of outrage among Bolsonaro loyalists, who took to the streets in mass protests.
The Brazil exposure helped catapult Cerimedo into successful presidential campaigns in Argentina (Milei), Honduras (Asfura) and Bolivia (Paz). His arrest prompted Chilean lawmakers to create a commission to investigate Cerimedo’s possible role in that nation’s recent electoral shift to the right.
With Cerimedo’s name now toxic, Paz, Milei and other former allies have distanced themselves.
Also ditching Cerimedo was his close partner, Javier Negre, a right-wing Spanish media entrepreneur who, in 2024, purchased 50% ownership of Cerimedo’s La Derecha Diario (The Daily Right), an online, Spanish-language MAGA megaphone. The site strongly backed Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella — who had Trump’s support — during his tight campaign this summer.
Following Cerimedo’s arrest, Negre announced that he had bought out his former partner in La Derecha Diario.
In Bolivia, the Cerimedo scandal has taken on the character of a Latin American telenovela.
A recovering Beller, shot three times in her upper body, granted interviews from her hospital bed, dishing on her lover’s alleged brutality and criminality.
According to Beller’s testimony to authorities, Cerimedo tricked her into the near-fatal rendezvous outside the hotel. He told her that a source was waiting to share details about the purported rape of a 13-year-old, she said. The supposed rapist? Bolivian ex-President Morales — a despised figure on the Latin American right.
The case has seen the once high-flying Cerimedo reduced to a slumping presence in a hoodie as authorities have shuffled the baldish, heavyset figure to hearings and lockups. Last week, he was transferred while awaiting trial to Bolivia’s maximum-security Chonchocoro prison, infamous for its high-altitude, ill-heated confines.
“I want to see my children!” a sobbing Cerimedo declared at one point in earshot of the media.
His legal team has pushed back. A defense lawyer, Margarita Arce, questioned whether Cerimedo had impregnated Beller and asserted to reporters that Beller staged a “self-inflicted attack” to smear Cerimedo and undermine the Bolivian government.
But prosecutors have sided with Beller, who told the Argentine daily Clarín: “Fernando Cerimedo wanted to kill me because I can tell everything that I know.”
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington and special correspondents Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
A 31-year-old British man has been charged under the National Security Act over alleged contact with Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Joshua Cammidge, from Swindon, allegedly received instructions from an individual believed to be linked to the GRU Volunteer Corps, a group controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the Crown Prosecution service said.
He has been charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service and preparatory conduct.
He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.
Cammidge was arrested at an address in Swindon on Friday by Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) London officers, supported by officers from Wiltshire Police.
He was taken to a London police station and searches were carried out at a different address in Swindon, the Metropolitan Police said.
He was further arrested and detained under the National Security Act on Saturday.
Sept. 3 (UPI) — Federal authorities on Thursday morning arrested a former Christian podcaster on allegations of issuing threats against President Donald Trump‘s life on social media.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted pictures online of Secret Service agents and other members of law enforcement arresting Benjamin Azariah Southworth, 40, of Los Angeles, Calif.
“Deadly threats like this are as vile as they are criminal — those responsible will be met by this FBI and law enforcement,” the FBI director said.
His arrest came a day after a federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment charging Southworth with one count each of threats against the president, cyberstalking and harassing telephone calls in interstate communications.
“As threats against President Trump’s life escalate, the Department of Justice will respond with the full force of the law,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
“We will hold perpetrators of violent threats accountable, and anyone who makes these threats online will not be allowed to hide behind their screens.”
The indictment alleges that Southworth, a former host of the pro-LGBTQ rights Christian podcast Yass, Jesus!, issued the threats via social media from January to May.
Federal prosecutors accused Southworth of expressing “his hatred toward President Trump and the President’s supporters” on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, which he allegedly used to encourage the abuse and harassment of, and threaten violence against, the commander in chief.
The court document references one video he posted to Instagram on March 31, criticizing the Supreme Court ruling that talk-based conversion therapy is speech protected by the First Amendment by saying, “I want to practice my free speech as a survivor of conversion therapy of five years: Kill Donald Trump.”
In a second video posted to Instagram on April 8, Southworth is allegedly depicted teleporting into the White House Oval Office behind Trump and raising a knife to the president’s head before cutting to black, after which an advertisement for Southworth’s website appears.
He also allegedly posted a video to his YouTube account following the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in late April when an armed man was arrested while trying to storm the event. In the video, Southworth allegedly states, “I’m outraged that Donald Trump isn’t dead,” according to the indictment.
The federal cyberstalking charge stems from allegations that he posted on TikTok the home address of a former personal lawyer to Trump along with the lawyer’s photo and a photo of the residence. He is also accused of leaving the son of Trump’s former personal lawyer harassing messages and voicemails as well as making what the Justice Department called harassing telephone calls to the lawyer’s wife.
If convicted, Southworth faces a statutory maximum penalty of five years in prison for each charge of threatening Trump’s life and cyberstalking as well as a statutory maximum sentence of two years in federal prison for telephonic harassment.
Southworth was to make his initial court appearance Thursday in Los Angeles.
Authorities say agent fired into home with people inside, lied about circumstances.
Published On 3 Sep 20263 Sep 2026
Federal prosecutors in the United States have charged an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer accused of lying under oath to investigators regarding the shooting of a Venezuelan man during an immigration crackdown this year.
Prosecutors alleged that Christian Castro lied to federal investigators about the events that led up to him firing on 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through the door of a Minnesota home in January.
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The Associated Press news agency and The New York Times reported the indictment, quoting a person familiar with the matter who was not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly. It was expected to be unsealed when Castro is detained.
Castro, a former Department of Homeland Security agent, also faces multiple state felony charges in Minnesota related to the nonfatal shooting, including assault with a dangerous weapon.
Authorities in the Midwestern state had sought to extradite Castro from Texas to face trial. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican and President Donald Trump loyalist, declined to cooperate with the request.
The ensuing standoff left Castro detained in Texas for 90 days before his release last week. Under Texas law, the state cannot hold the subject of an extradition order for longer than that. His whereabouts were unclear as of Thursday.
The charges mark a rare move by the Department of Justice under Trump.
Trump’s top officials have repeatedly argued that immigration agents maintain broad protections while conducting enforcement, a position rejected by many legal experts.
For example, no one has been charged in the fatal shootings by immigration agents of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January.
An Associated Press review conducted in February found about two dozen ICE employees and contractors had faced criminal charges since 2020.
An American Civil Liberties Union report released in July documented instances of violent tactics or other civil rights violations in about a third of 1,200 immigration enforcement incidents reviewed in 2025 alone.
Video evidence contradicts statement
The Trump administration distanced itself from the Castro case after video emerged contradicting the agent’s initial accounts of the confrontation.
Castro told investigators that Sosa-Celis had attacked him, which the surveillance footage showed did not happen.
Todd Lyons, then acting head of ICE, said at the time that the footage “has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements”.
Castro and a fellow agent chased Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan national, after a traffic stop, according to charging documents.
Aljorna fled to the home he shared with Sosa-Celis. After a brief scramble, the two men ran inside. Castro then shot through the closed door, “knowing [the home] was occupied by several people”, the documents said.
One witness said there were two children in the house when Castro opened fire. Sosa-Celis was hit in the leg.
Federal authorities have since suspended Castro and dropped all charges against Sosa-Celis and his co-defendant, who were both initially accused of forcibly assaulting an ICE officer. The other agent involved in the incident was also suspended, but has not yet been charged.
Thursday’s indictment comes after ProPublica this week reported that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials had blocked prosecutors from pursuing more serious civil rights charges against Castro, including “deprivation of rights under color of law”.
However, a source close to the investigation told the AP the active investigation could still result in civil rights charges.
The Trump administration has scaled back the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and dismantled several Biden-era police oversight initiatives since returning to office in January 2025.
That has come as the administration has revved up its mass deportation campaign across the country.
In August, immigration agents detained 50,925 people with the Department of Homeland Security hailing it as a new record for the “highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month”.
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have charged a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with lying to investigators about the events leading up to the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown earlier this year, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person said Christian Castro, the officer who authorities say shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in January, has been charged with making false statements to federal investigators.
The federal charges, which remain under seal, follow Castro’s release from jail last week after Texas’ governor refused to immediately sign an extradition warrant to hand him over to Minnesota authorities, who have charged him separately with assault and false reporting of a crime related to the same shooting.
Federal authorities had initially accused Sosa-Celis and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the confrontation. But federal prosecutors dropped charges against the men after video evidence showed the officers may have lied about the encounter, and officials opened an investigation.
Earlier this week, a federal prosecutor working on the case told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims that Justice Department officials blocked the prosecutor’s push to bring a more serious civil rights charge against the officer for the shooting, ProPublica reported.
But the person familiar with the investigation disputed the prosecutor’s characterization, saying the civil rights probe is continuing and there has been no final decision on whether to bring additional charges. The prosecutor, Matthew Evans, was fired on Thursday and is now under investigation for alleged obstruction of a grand jury probe, the person said.
An automatic email response from Evans’ Justice Department account said he was on leave. Other attempts to reach him were not immediately successful.
Castro was initially arrested in May in the Minnesota case, and he was held in custody in Brownsville, Texas, a city bordering Mexico, while Minnesota officials sought his extradition. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to immediately sign off, citing continuing investigations of fraud in government social service programs in Minnesota, which Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there.
Minnesota officials had sought to stop the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing Castro, out of fear that he would flee to Mexico. According to a lawsuit filed by Minnesota, Castro had a conversation with a woman, while he was incarcerated, where he spoke about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico after his release.
But Castro was released a week ago after a federal judge refused to order Texas to extradite him.
The Department of Homeland Security previously called Minnesota’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction in the case.
Castro was suspended from ICE without pay in February while federal authorities conducted the investigation.
“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct,” ICE’s acting director at the time, Todd Lyons, said then. “Violations of this sacred sworn oath will not be tolerated. ICE remains fully committed to transparency, accountability, and the fair enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.”
Minnesota officials alleged that Castro, 52, fired through the front door of a home and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh.
Castro and another officer had chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Minnesota prosecutors said the officer then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
Attorneys for Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, who Minnesota officials have said were legally in the U.S., didn’t immediately respond to emails Thursday from the Associated Press.
An aspiring Los Angeles-area rapper was arrested on Wednesday and charged in connection with a multimillion-dollar check-cashing scheme, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Ada William Obayuwana of Quartz Hill, who goes by “ColdheartedAC” and “AC,” and two others were charged in a 25-count federal grand jury indictment alleging that they illegally possessed more than 50 stolen U.S. Treasury checks and hundreds of other checks belonging to individuals and businesses worth more than $8.1 million, then cashed or attempted to cash them at lenders throughout Southern California.
Albert Tai Vu, of Westminster, and Cassandra Marie Murrillo, of San Diego, are the other two defendants charged in the case.
According to the indictment, between April 2022 and December 2023, the trio obtained the stolen checks, some containing tax refunds and veterans’ and Social Security Administration benefits, then forged endorsements or modified names and addresses to steal the money.
The trio is accused of opening bank accounts to receive the money. They also used business documents to impersonate the identities of the victims connected to the stolen checks and deposited the money into bank and credit union accounts across Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, the indictment says.
During this period, Obayuwana allegedly tried to cash at least three Treasury tax refund checks worth $382,109 and was successful in cashing one, withdrawing $229,109, federal authorities allege.
In December 2023, Obayuwana “possessed in his car in Oceanside more than 100 stolen or fraudulent checks, cumulatively worth more than $6.1 million,” states the indictment. Among the checks were 48 stolen Treasury checks worth some $2,555,417 in tax refunds, veterans’ benefits,and Social Security benefits.
Obayuwana was able to cash eight of them worth about $1.7 million, according to federal investigators.
Vu tried to cash at least six Treasury checks totaling $2.15 million and successfully cashed two tax fund refunds worth $772,159, the indictment says. He also allegedly cashed a pair of cashier’s checks, each valued at $250,000, at an Anaheim bank and used money from one to buy a Range Rover and the second to pay Murillo.
Murillo is accused of trying to cash at least two checks worth $60,193, successfully cashing one for $31,405.
Following his arrest, Obayuwana remains in federal custody. He is charged with nine counts of bank fraud and faces three counts of delivering stolen Treasury checks and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Vu, who was arrested Thursday, is charged with five counts of delivering stolen Treasury checks, four counts of money laundering and two counts of aggravated identity theft.
Murillo, who is expected to surrender to federal authorities in Los Angeles on Monday, is charged with an additional count of delivering stolen Treasury checks.
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer charged with shooting a man and lying about it during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis was released from a Texas jail Thursday, after a judge refused to order his return to Minnesota.
Christian Castro was released at the break of dawn from a detention center in Brownsville. He motioned his hand toward a few camera operators and a reporter crowding around him and quickly got into an SUV that drove off.
A day earlier, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in an order that said he couldn’t prevent a county sheriff from releasing Castro or order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant.
Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Castro is accused of firing gun through door of home
Castro is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the leg. Prosecutors say Castro also falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
After a Minnesota judge issued a nationwide warrant for Castro’s arrest in May, authorities, including Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, arrested Castro in Cameron County on May 29. Minnesota authorities have sought his extradition since his arrest, but he remained in custody in Brownsville, a city bordering Mexico.
Under Texas law and barring extradition, Castro had to be released after 90 days of detention, which was Thursday.
Minnesota officials believe Castro could flee to Mexico.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a request for a temporary restraining order last week seeking to block Castro’s release or to order his return to Minnesota.
Abbott waiting for internal state investigation about Castro
Texas attorneys on Tuesday argued the judge could not rule on a decision that’s still pending. Abbott has not denied the extradition. Instead he is waiting for the outcome of an internal state investigation considering whether Castro was legally a “fugitive” under the Extradition Clause, the lawyers said.
The judge wrote in Wednesday’s order that the court couldn’t yet step in.
“The Court concludes that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction because the case is not ripe for adjudication,” the order read. “Minnesota cannot premise its causes of action on the allegation that Governor Abbott may violate those authorities in the future; it must prove that a violation has already occurred.”
The judge said in his order that the extradition laws do not outline how long the Texas governor can take to make that decision.
Ellison said in a statement that his office would keep litigating the case but didn’t specify what it would do next.
Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, welcomed the ruling and said it was the governor’s duty to carefully consider the merits of extradition requests.
Abbott said last week he would not respond to the extradition request, citing the ongoing investigation into fraud in government social service programs in Minnesota, which President Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there.
Minnesota officials say Castro could flee the country, citing calls he made from jail to a woman in Mexico, talking “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released,” according to the lawsuit.
The judge conceded that Castro could flee the country but added that “the threat of injury by itself does not create an issue ripe for adjudication.”
Michael Gonzalez and Valerie Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Valerie Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. AP writer Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.
