The authorities of Minnesota sued the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to force him to authorize the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who earlier this year fired at a house in the city of Minneapolis and injured a Venezuelan migrant. Months later he fled that state and was found and arrested in Texas.
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“Instead of promptly fulfilling his ministerial duty to execute the delivery order issued by the governor (of Minnesota) (…) as he has usually done in response to extradition requests throughout his term, Governor Abbott has withheld said order and delayed Castro’s extradition for almost three months,” reads the complaint filed Tuesday before the Southern District Court of Texas.
In the lawsuit, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the state attorney general, Keith Ellison, explain that a state judge found probable cause to believe that on January 14, 2026, agent Christian Castro fired at a house in Minneapolis knowing it was occupied, and injured Julio Sosa Celis in the leg. The incident occurred during the days when ICE was deployed in the city as part of Operation Metro Surge, a migration control campaign in Minnesota that began at the end of 2025, with which the federal agency deployed about 3,000 heavily armed, masked agents in unmarked cars. While active, it sparked strong protests.
Castro told federal investigators that Sosa and another man had attacked him with a shovel and a broom, but security video footage contradicted his version, according to court documents cited by The New York Times.
After the incident, the Minnesota judge considered there was enough evidence to charge the agent with four counts of assault with a weapon, as well as a misdemeanor for lying to justify the shooting. This led the magistrate to issue a nationwide arrest warrant that was executed in Texas on May 29, 2026. Since then, agent Christian Castro has remained detained in a jail in the border county of Cameron, Texas, awaiting his extradition.
The lawsuit explains that right after the arrest, Governor Walz sent Abbott the request for Castro’s transfer, but received no response.
Walz and Ellison claim that the Constitution establishes that the interstate extradition process must be “quick and summary” and that Abbott “lacks legal basis” to refuse to hand over the ICE agent. They warn that failure to perform his duties puts the agent’s charges in Minnesota at risk: Texas’s Criminal Extradition Act sets a 90-day limit to hold fugitives before sending them to another state to face criminal charges. That deadline ends on August 26.
“If the defendants are allowed to release Castro before handing him over to Minnesota agents for extradition, there is a considerable risk that Castro will flee and evade judicial processing in Minnesota,” they claim in the 19-page document. They state that Castro has “substantial ties” with a woman in Mexico with whom he frequently communicates and with whom he has talked about marriage and buying a house after being released. This leads them to suggest there is a “real risk” that he will cross the border and flee to that country without being prosecuted in Minnesota.
The lawsuit against Abbott is not a surprise. Last week, Ellison sent a letter to the Texas governor asking him to sign the letter to hand over custody of Castro to Minnesota authorities. He set a deadline of Monday at five in the afternoon.
In the lawsuit filed before the southern Texas court on Tuesday, the attorney described Abbott’s decision not to sign the authorization as “unusual and inconsistent” with the cooperative response that typically occurs between states and that has already happened in the past between both governments.
In the lawsuit, Walz and Ellison explain that in the last five years Texas has authorized the extradition of about 11 people accused of crimes in Minnesota in less than 30 days from when they are requested. This includes the extradition of a person charged with second-degree assault — the same charge Castro faces — whose authorization was signed in 17 days, it reads.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Abbott was evasive with reporters about the lawsuit. He assured he would not respond “at all” to Minnesota until “it acknowledges its guilt in the fraud that occurred and reimburses the United States.”
The Donald Trump administration justified Operation Metro Surge by linking it to a scandal of fraud in state social assistance programs. In this operation, ICE agents were linked to several shootings, including two incidents in which U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti died at the hands of Trump’s immigration police.
