By Jonathan Allen
Sept 18 (Reuters) - A US immigration agent pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal charges of lying to the FBI that he was attacked before shooting a Venezuelan man in the leg in Minneapolis at the height of President Donald Trump's deportation sweeps in January.
Christian Castro, who has been suspended without pay from his job as a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, is the first federal law enforcement officer to be charged by the US Justice Department with wrongdoing
in Operation Metro Surge, which saw thousands of armed, masked agents deployed to Minnesota's cities last winter.
Federal prosecutors say that Castro lied when he told investigators that Julio Sosa-Celis, 24, and others were attacking him with a broom and snow shovel when he fired his gun.
Castro's plea in the US District Court in Saint Paul comes a day after he answered to separate state charges of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and falsely reporting a crime brought by Hennepin County prosecutors in neighboring Minneapolis.
The court appearances follow an extraordinary months-long legal battle to have Castro, who lives in Texas, returned to Minneapolis. The state charges were filed in May, but Castro, 52, spent 90 days in a county jail in Texas after Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, refused to sign extradition papers sent down by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat.
A few days after his release earlier this month, he was arrested again after a federal grand jury handed down an indictment of six counts of making materially false statements, which carries a maximum sentence of six years in prison.
Castro drove from Texas to Minneapolis on Wednesday to surrender himself, his lawyers said, and spent the night in the Hennepin County jail before being released on bail.
After the nonfatal shooting on January 14, Castro told investigators that he fired at Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan delivery driver, when Sosa-Celis and another man attacked him in a struggle on the ground. His account was repeated by then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials as they defended the widely protested surge in immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Prosecutors say Castro's account was disproved by video evidence, forcing the Justice Department to drop its prosecution of Sosa-Celis and open a criminal investigation into Castro.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the video evidence showed Castro was standing and fired from a short distance through the front door of Sosa-Celis's home, wounding the man in the leg.
"Mr. Castro invented a story to justify shooting through a front door into a house with multiple people in it," Moriarty told reporters after Thursday's state court hearing. "The bullet he fired lodged in the wall of a child's bedroom."
A lawyer for Castro, Daniel Gerdts, declined to comment.
Moriarty's office is continuing to investigate the federal immigration officers who fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both US citizens, in January.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Alistair Bell)
