By Steve Gorman and Andrew Goudsward
Aug 26 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by Minnesota to force Texas Governor Greg Abbott to immediately extradite a jailed U.S. immigration agent facing assault charges for shooting a Venezuelan man in the leg during last winter's deportation surge in Minneapolis.
The ruling clears the way for Christian Castro, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer arrested by Texas Rangers acting on a Minnesota court warrant, to be freed from custody on Thursday. That's when a 90-day detention limit for someone awaiting extradition under Texas law is due to expire.
Minnesota authorities had argued in court that Castro, jailed in the Gulf Coast border city of Brownsville, Texas, since May 29, was a flight risk if he were released.
Castro is wanted in Minnesota to face four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and a charge of falsely reporting a crime.
The charges stem from an incident in which Castro shot and wounded Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis on January 14, at the height of U.S. President Donald Trump's deportation campaign in Minneapolis, then fabricated his reason for using lethal force against a man who was unarmed, prosecutors say.
Castro could not be reached for comment and it was unclear whether he has retained a lawyer.
The Minneapolis deportation sweep, called Operation Metro Surge, drew weeks of demonstrations and confrontations between protesters and ICE agents in which immigration officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens.
The case surrounding the shooting of Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, has lingered as a flashpoint between the governors of Texas and Minnesota over immigration control.
Abbott, a fellow Republican, has been a supporter of Trump's deportation efforts, while Minnesota's Democratic leaders, including Governor Tim Walz, have condemned Trump's surge of armed ICE patrols in Minneapolis and other cities.
In a court brief filed on Monday, Abbott questioned whether Castro should be classified as a fugitive, and thus subject to extradition, because he did not flee Minnesota but rather was reassigned to his home base in Texas by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, after the shooting.
Minnesota authorities countered that the issue of how or why Castro ended up in Texas is immaterial, and that the U.S. Constitution and federal law require states to extradite people wanted for crimes in another state.
Siding with Texas officials a day after hearing arguments in the case, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled that Abbott had not been shown to have refused the extradition request, only that he had not yet made a decision. Rodriguez concluded that the law does not require Abbott to turn over a fugitive within a certain time frame.
Rodriguez acknowledged the possibility that Castro could attempt to flee the U.S. after his release and "impose a hardship on Minnesota's prosecutorial efforts," but found that prospect does not alter his legal conclusions.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
