Courts

ICE agent Christian Castro faces criminal charges for shooting a Minnesota man in the leg during an immigration raid.

A United States judge has denied a request to compel the extradition of a federal immigration agent charged with shooting a man during an immigration raid in the state of Minnesota and lying about it.

Wednesday’s decision concerns the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Christian Castro, who has been detained in a county jail in Texas since May.

Minnesota has sought his extradition as he faces charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in Hennepin County, which covers Minneapolis.

Under Texas law, the state cannot hold the subject of an extradition order for more than 90 days. At that point, the suspect must either be transferred or released. The deadline for Castro is set to expire on Thursday.

Minnesota argued in a lawsuit this month that Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has refused to authorise the extradition for political reasons.

But in Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr wrote that he could not intervene because Abbott has not yet acted – and has therefore not yet violated any law.

“The record reflects only that Governor Abbott has neither agreed nor refused to sign the rendition warrant as to Castro,” Rodriguez wrote.

Castro has been charged in connection with the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during an immigration raid in Minnesota on January 14, part of a mass deportation effort under President Donald Trump.

Starting in December, Trump oversaw a large-scale deployment of federal agents to the Midwestern state, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

The operation, which lasted less than three months, sparked protests and allegations of civil liberty violations from residents and watchdog groups.

Prosecutors say Castro fired a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the leg.

Afterwards, he and another agent accused Sosa-Celis and another man of assaulting federal authorities with a broom handle and snow shovel. Those allegations were later disproven after video of the incident emerged. Criminal charges against Sosa-Celis were subsequently dropped.

Todd Lyons, then-acting director of ICE, confirmed in February that the agents appeared to have made “untruthful statements”. Castro and the second agent were placed on administrative leave.

Castro is currently in custody in Brownsville, Texas. Minnesota officials have warned that he may flee the country if released, citing calls he made from jail to a woman in Mexico.

During those calls, Castro talked “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released”, according to Minnesota’s lawsuit.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a request for a temporary restraining order last week to stop Castro’s anticipated release and force Governor Abbott to sign the extradition warrant.

Ellison has framed Abbott’s decision not to take action as a way of supporting Trump’s mass deportation campaign and skirting federal extradition law.

“For nearly three months, Greg Abbott has refused to return ICE agent Christian Castro to Minnesota, where he’s charged with shooting a Minnesotan in his own home,” Ellison wrote in a social media post.

“Abbott has a legal obligation to return him. Instead, he’s chosen to ignore the law.”

Meta settles $16.68bn lawsuit over child addiction claims, agreeing to major changes in Facebook and Instagram features.

Meta Platforms has agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of designing Facebook and Instagram in a way that addicted children, misled consumers about safety, and collected personal data of children on the platform.

On Wednesday, the social media giant agreed to pay a maximum of $16.68bn as part of a settlement to resolve claims brought in the United States case, championed by a coalition of 29 US states. The case, which started on August 18, was expected to last six weeks.

Meta, based in Silicon Valley in California, has also agreed to make changes to Facebook and Instagram nationwide as part of the settlement. Among these are daily usage limits of two hours for those under the age of 18, which can only be removed by a parent, and nighttime blocks.

The California State Attorney General’s Office said that the Mark Zuckerberg-led company would also identify and remove children under the age of 13 from the platform.

Meta denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which still needs court approval. It had faced up to $1.4 trillion in fines in the case, but the coalition had been seeking a penalty closer to $200bn.

The settlement comes after a loss in a comparable landmark case in New Mexico, where a jury ordered Meta to pay $375m in March and another $567m in August.

Meta’s stock tumbled in early trading on Wall Street, down 0.1 percent since the market opened.

Meta, parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is on trial over claims it sought to hook young users on its platforms despite mental health concerns.

The top executive at Instagram has admitted that few teenagers have used a feature meant to counter addiction before it was turned on by default, as hearings in a landmark trial against its parent company, Meta, continue in the United States.

Adam Mosseri testified on Tuesday as Meta’s trial – over accusations that it designed its platforms, including Facebook, to be addictive to young people – entered its second week.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram since 2018, denied any suggestion by US states suing Meta that Instagram had stalled by not making the “Take a Break” feature the default setting for teenagers until September 2024, nearly three years after its launch.

“Most teens didn’t want it,” Mosseri said. “We decided to push forward with it anyway.”

Mosseri is a central witness in the lawsuit brought by 29 US states, in what experts call the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.

Four of the states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – have accused Meta of designing the platforms to hook young users, driving anxiety, depression and even suicide, while misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety.

All 29 states say Meta violated US federal law by improperly collecting and employing the personal data of children under 13 while they used its platforms.

The states are seeking approximately $200bn in damages from Meta.

‘Designed to fail’

Meta has rejected accusations that it sought to addict children, saying its research showed no clear link between adolescents’ social media use and a lack of wellbeing.

Under questioning from Jason Slothouber, a lawyer for Colorado, Mosseri acknowledged that the percentage of teenagers using Take a Break was in the low single digits before Instagram made it ⁠the default.

Take a Break encourages teenage users to close the app after a certain amount of time. Mosseri had estimated in a December 2021 blog post that more than 90 percent of teenagers who turned the feature on kept it on.

That number, however, referred to the number of those who had turned on the feature.

When asked whether Meta had disclosed its low adoption, which had reached only 1 or 2 percent of accounts, Mosseri admitted the company had not, but said the safety features were later turned on by default in Teen Accounts, which launched in 2024 and have parental controls.

Former Meta employees have said that features such as Take a Break and Quiet Mode were difficult to find and not widely used, casting doubt on whether they represented a serious effort by the company to limit screen time for young users.

“In my experience, Take a Break is a feature that’s designed to fail,” Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, testified last week.

George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on safety features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, likewise stated on Monday that adoption rates of such features were “very low” and that company leadership had declined to approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for young teenagers.

He added that turning on such features automatically would have had a “notable negative impact” on user engagement.

The trial could last six weeks.

Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether Meta is liable and, if so, determine any civil penalties and changes to Facebook and Instagram.