Minnesota Sues Texas in a Texas Court to Get Texas to Hand Over a Federal Agent

ST. PAUL, MINN. — Minnesota became the first state in American history to sue another state, in the defendant’s own backyard, over a law enforcement officer, with the added complication that the officer in question is a federal agent. The two states are, in other words, in a legal fight over a man who belongs to a third government, and all three governments are, by every account, having a fine time.

Attorney General Keith Ellison filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in the federal court for the Southern District of Texas — Texas’s court, in Texas — asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff of Cameron County from releasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro, and to order Governor Greg Abbott to sign the extradition warrant so that Minnesota officers can take custody. Abbott’s office, for the record, said it would not comment on “pending extradition matters,” which is the political equivalent of a shrug with a letterhead.

The underlying case is not, itself, new. Castro, 52, was arrested in May on Minnesota charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime, connected to the January 14 wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during the agency’s enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis, known as Operation Metro Surge. Prosecutors say Castro fired a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home and struck Sosa-Celis in the leg, with the bullet lodging in the wall of a child’s bedroom. Prosecutors say Castro then told a different story: that Sosa-Celis and another man had attacked an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

The new development is the clock. Under Texas law, Castro could be released from the jail in the border town where he is being held next week — 90 days after his arrest — unless Minnesota gets its extradition warrant signed. The lawsuit, in a passage that reads like a true-crime novel written by a state attorney general, notes that the jail logs show Castro making phone calls to a woman in Mexico, “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released.”

At a news conference, Ellison put the matter plainly: “Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota. He must face justice in Minnesota. Gov. Abbott should have granted Gov. Walz’s extradition request long ago and is required to do so now.” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who brought the original charges, did not appear to be in a hurry to litigate the point that her state’s case had to be argued in the state that refused to hand over the defendant.

The jurisdictional arithmetic is the part that has the lawyers smiling and the constitutional scholars sweating. Minnesota is a state. Texas is a state. The court they have chosen is federal. The man they are fighting over is employed by the federal government. The shooting happened in Minnesota. The warrant is from Minnesota. The governor who will decide the matter is from Texas. Every arrow in the diagram points somewhere different, and the diagram is the lawsuit.

What is not yet known is whether Castro has a lawyer who will speak for him. Court records in Minnesota and county jail records in Texas do not list a defense attorney, which is a gap that the defense bar has, historically, filled with the speed of a man who knows a gap is a gap.

At press time, the judge had not set a schedule, Abbott had not signed, and the 90-day clock had not been checked, which is to say that while two states argue over who gets to hold a man, the man in question is holding his own referendum, one phone call to a woman in Mexico at a time.