ICE agent freed from Texas jail in defiance of Minnesota extradition request - Hawaii Tribune-Herald

Christian Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, was released around 7 a.m. From a lockup in Brownsville after a federal judge refused to order his transfer to Minnesota, where authorities wanted him on assault charges. Castro had been held there since his May 29 arrest. The charges stem from a shooting during last winter's deportation operations in Minneapolis, where Castro allegedly shot an unarmed Venezuelan man.

The Cameron County Sheriff's Department confirmed his release. Minnesota authorities had sought extradition, but the federal judge's refusal cut that process short. The case sits at the intersection of federal immigration enforcement authority and state criminal jurisdiction, a tension that courts have rarely been forced to referee this directly.

For people watching federal immigration policy, the case raises a question that has no clean answer yet: when a federal agent acting under federal authority faces state criminal charges, which government gets to decide what happens next? Thursday's ruling suggests at least one federal judge thinks the answer leans toward Washington, not St. Paul.

Castro had been in custody for less than two weeks before the court intervened.