An immigration officer facing state charges in connection with a shooting in Minneapolis was released from jail on Thursday after Republican officials in Texas prevailed in an extradition battle with their Democratic counterparts in Minnesota. It is unclear whether the agent will ultimately answer those charges in court.
The officer, Christian Castro of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been jailed for the last three months in Cameron County, Texas, while Minnesota officials sought to have him sent north to face assault charges related to a shooting in January that wounded a Venezuelan immigrant.
Sheriff Manuel Trevino of Cameron County said Mr. Castro was released just before 7 a.m. local time.
The case has tested the limits of state powers in an era of deep political mistrust.
It is rare for federal agents to face state criminal charges for on-duty conduct, and the Trump administration has argued that the charges Minnesota prosecutors have filed against Mr. Castro are illegitimate. It is also exceedingly rare for one governor not to act on a request from another to extradite a criminal defendant, as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has done.
See here and here for the background, and you can say that again. David Kurtz at TPM fills in some details.
Abbott managed to pull off his successful political gambit of protecting a fugitive ICE agent wanted on criminal charges in a blue state without ever having to deny outright Minnesota’s extradition request. He slow-rolled the request for two months even as he routinely processed other extraditions to Minnesota. Then when the state prosecutor in Minnesota pressed the issue, Abbott at the last minute ordered a Texas investigation into whether Castro was really a fugitive under extradition law.
In a nod to Minnesota’s legal position, Judge Rodriguez used a lengthy footnote to express skepticism about the legal validity of Abbott’s claim that Castro might not really be a fugitive because he didn’t flee Minnesota but was ordered by ICE to return to his home base in Texas. The Trump DOJ had leaped into the case at the last minute to buttress Abbott’s argument, offering proof that Castro had in fact been ordered by ICE to return to Texas.
“The Court has doubts that caselaw supports the construction of ‘fugitive’ that Texas is considering,” Judge Rodriguez opined in a signal of how he might rule if a riper version of the case comes back to him.
In his ruling, Judge Rodriguez allowed for the possibility that a governor could stonewall an extradition request for so long that it effectively became a refusal to extradite, but that the circumstances of this case didn’t amount to that yet. Regardless, Abbott violated no law but considering Minnesota’s request for three months, Rodriguez ruled.
Minnesota is left with the bleak options of appealing to the 5th Circuit, the most MAGA-ified of the federal appeals courts — or of biding its time until Abbott either officially refuses to extradite Castro or, more likely, enough time has passed without Abbott taking any action to argue that he’s constructively refused the extradition request. Rodriguez offered no signals in his ruling on how long would be long enough to be deemed a constructive denial.
By that time, Castro may be ensconced in Mexico, where Minnesota prosecutors say he owns property and has a romantic partner he plans to marry.
I don’t really have much to add to that. As has so often been the case for the last few decades, the one thing that might truly have an effect is for people – specifically, in this case, Greg Abbott – to lose elections as a result of their bad actions. Maybe this is finally the year for that. The Associated Press has more.
IMHO, Texas is now a sanctuary state for criminals – Paxton, Castro, add your own.