moriarty

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota prosecutors announced Monday that they have obtained key evidence in their ongoing investigations into fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during pitched protests against a federal immigration enforcement crackdown in the state earlier this year.

“Through the cooperation of our federal partners we have obtained the hard drives of previously withheld evidence in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said. “We have also obtained some of the physical evidence that was previously withheld, including Renee Good’s car.”

Statements, police body camera video and other evidence had previously been withheld by federal officials in the killings.

She said state and local investigators now also have in their possession Good’s damaged car.

Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed in her car while leaving an anti-immigration enforcement protest in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surged through the region.

Her death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse shot and killed by federal officers just weeks later during a Jan. 24 protest, sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement.

“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said.

Investigators are going through all the evidence, including hard drives with statements, hours of video recorded by body-worn cameras and the car, Moriarty said.

“We need transparency. We need cooperation. Our community needs it,” she said. “Our democracy requires it.”

At the end of June, Minnesota Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and Moriarty asked a federal judge to push out the deadlines in their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice because they said they were in the midst of recently reinitiated “ongoing discussions” with the FBI about information sharing.

Those ongoing discussions with the FBI about information sharing are likely to affect Minnesota’s request for summary judgment in the case, Ellison and Moriarty wrote in their motion to the court.

The attorneys representing the federal government signed onto the motion.

Ellison said he remains “deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators.”

“It should never have taken this long for Minnesota law enforcement to gain access to the federal government’s evidence,” he said in a statement. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”

There have been at least eight deaths since the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign began last year, but nobody has been charged in connection with them.

A Minneapolis resident, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, was also shot and injured in his home while ICE agents were in pursuit of another man.

In May, Christian Castro, an ICE agent, was arrested and charged with assault as well as falsely reporting a crime in connection with that Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting.

Prosecutors say Castro, 52, fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh.

In April, Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., another ICE agent, was charged with pointing his gun at a motorist and passenger on a Minneapolis highway.

Prosecutors said at the time it was the first criminal case against a federal officer involved in the Minnesota immigration crackdown.

On Monday, ICE was involved in the fatal shooting in Maine, according to state House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat.

Details of what transpired in Biddeford, a coastal city of about 23,000 people roughly 15 miles southwest of Portland, remain unclear.

Last week, an ICE agent in Houston fatally shot a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades as the homebuilder drove his construction crew to a job site.

The federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has acknowledged officers were looking for someone else when they attempted to stop Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s vehicle. The agency maintains Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle, prompting an officer to open fire in self-defense.

Marcelo and Boone write for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal immigration officer wanted for shooting a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s Minnesota crackdown was arrested Friday in Texas, authorities said.

Christian Castro, of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was taken into custody 11 days after Minneapolis prosecutors charged him with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.

Hennepin County, Minnesota prosecutors said the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension located Castro, 52, in Texas and worked with agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office and the Texas Rangers to arrest him.

“Today’s arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said.

Online court records do not list an attorney for Castro and it wasn’t immediately clear if he has one. Messages seeking comment were left with ICE, the Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office and the Texas Rangers.

Castro is the second federal agent to be charged over their conduct during the Minnesota crackdown, which was known as Operation Metro Surge. He is one of two agents that ICE Director Todd Lyons said lied about the circumstances of the incident.

Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty holds up a document containing charges against ICE agent Christian Castro during a news conference at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, on Monday, May 18, 2026.

(Renée Jones Schneider/Minnesota Star Tribune Via Associated Press)

According to prosecutors, Castro fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after Castro and another officer chased a different man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, to the Minneapolis apartment duplex where he and Sosa-Celis lived. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna were legally in the U.S., Moriarty said.

Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. A federal judge later dismissed the charges, and ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether officers lied about what happened.

In a statement after the charges were announced, ICE said the U.S. attorney’s office was investigating statements made by officers, who could face disciplinary action including being fired and prosecuted. ICE called the Hennepin County attorney’s action “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.” DHS’s Inspector General’s Office, which Moriarty credited with assisting in the arrest, is separate from ICE and is meant to serve as a watchdog for DHS agencies, including ICE.

Minneapolis last month released video showing the moments before Sosa-Celis’s shooting, captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.

The video appears to show a person standing with a snow shovel outside the house, near the street, then retreating toward the house and tossing the shovel into the yard. This happens as a person being chased by another person runs up from the street, falls on the sidewalk, gets up, and keeps heading toward the house.

The three appear to scuffle near the front steps for about 10 seconds. The exact moment when Sosa-Celis is shot isn’t clear. A car with flashing lights pulls up, and another person walks up.

The Trump administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Trump’s national deportation campaign and considered Operation Metro Surge a success.

But tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign, and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers sparked mass unrest and raised questions about officers’ conduct.

Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have clashed over who has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct.

Moriarty’s office last month charged immigration agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car on a highway. He turned himself in last week and his lawyer disputes the charges.

The county is also investigating Good’s and Pretti’s killings and sued the Trump administration in March to gain access to evidence in those cases and the Sosa-Celis shooting.