Minnesota sues Texas governor to compel extradition of ICE agent for trial
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks during a press conference about federal detention of children at the State Capitol building on Feb. 3, 2026, in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with assault over a nonfatal shooting and alleged false reporting during Operation Metro Surge.
The ICE agent, Christian Castro, is accused of firing a gun at the front door of an occupied home in Minneapolis on Jan. 14, striking a Venezuelan man in the leg, then lying about the circumstances of the shooting, according to prosecutors.
Castro was charged in May with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. A Hennepin County District Court judge found probable cause for the charges and issued a nationwide warrant for Castro’s arrest, according to Ellison’s office.
On May 29, Texas Rangers located and arrested Castro, after which a Cameron County judge ordered him detained pending extradition proceedings, according to Ellison’s office.
Four days after Castro’s arrest, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sent Abbott an extradition request, but, according to Ellison’s office, the Texas governor has “withheld a rendition warrant” directing law enforcement to transfer Castro back to Minnesota for prosecution.
“Now, Governor Abbott is trying to shield Castro from being held accountable for these serious charges by refusing to extradite him to Minnesota,” Ellison said in a statement on Tuesday. “Abbott’s refusal to extradite Castro is unconstitutional and violates federal law and Texas law. I will not stand for that, so I’m taking Abbott to court. Christian Castro will stand trial in Minnesota.”
ABC News reached out to the Texas governor’s office for comment on the Minnesota lawsuit but has not yet received a response.
The lawsuit also alleges that Manuel Trevino — the sheriff of Cameron County, Texas, who is named as a defendant in the federal complaint — has failed to make Castro available for extradition.
Ellison’s office said the attorney general will also be requesting a temporary restraining order “barring the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office from releasing Castro.”
The Cameron County sheriff declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, MA on 9/8/04. (Photo by Rick Friedman/Rick Friedman Photography/Corbis via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The House Oversight Committee on Thursday is scheduled to conduct a closed-door interview with Sarah Kellen, a former personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, as part of the panel’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into the late sex offender.
Kellen, 46, was previously a subject of criminal investigations but has never been charged — due, in part, to her own allegations of persistent sexual abuse at the hands of the disgraced financier, according to court documents and records released earlier this year by the Justice Department.
“Every aspect of her life was controlled by Epstein. He dominated her psychologically. [Kellen] was constantly emotionally bullied and coerced by Epstein, including being required to submit to his constant sexual abuse,” her attorneys wrote in a civil complaint against Epstein’s estate in 2020.
Kellen’s appearance at the Capitol comes as the committee ramps up for a busy stretch of its investigation, which was officially launched in February of last year. Other notable witnesses scheduled in the coming months include Epstein’s longtime executive assistant Leslie Groff, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Goldman Sachs chief counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, and billionaires Bill Gates and Leon Black.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), has indicated that a report on its findings will be produced before the end of the year.
Following Epstein’s death in custody in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York investigating possible collaborators engaged in discussions with Kellen and her attorneys that spanned more than a year. Documents released by the DOJ earlier this year included prosecutors’ internal assessments of a potential case against Kellen and emails from her attorneys trying to dissuade the government from filing charges.
“We feel that given [Kellen’s] abuse, and given the fact that we see her basically as a cog in Epstein’s wheel, acting entirely at his direction and doing what she did at a time that she herself was a very vulnerable victim, a [non-prosecution] would be the appropriate disposition,” an attorney for Kellen wrote in the spring of 2020.
According to DOJ records, the government did not dispute that Kellen “was herself a victim of abuse by Epstein,” noting that her account was consistent with others who worked for Epstein and allegedly experienced sexual exploitation.
Prosecutors detailed in a proposed “statement of facts” sent to Kellen’s attorneys in late 2020 that several “minor victims reported to federal agents that Epstein paid them for sexualized massages while they were underage girls, including during massages that [Kellen] scheduled.”
Kellen conceded that Epstein directed her to schedule his daily massages in the early 2000s when he was staying in his Palm Beach, Florida, residence, according to the DOJ records. She claimed she was provided a directory of names and instructed on who to call, and denied having knowledge that some who came to the house were underage.
She told prosecutors she viewed the “masseuses as her peers — i.e. young adults in their early 20s — and it never [crossed] her mind that any of them were minors,” government lawyers wrote in a December 2019 memo summarizing their investigation for Geoffrey Berman, then the top federal prosecutor in New York.
Kellen said she “only learned that Epstein was sexually abusing minors when news articles started coming out about it” in the mid-2000s, according to the records. “She recalled being shocked, angry, and disappointed. She was particularly angry with Epstein for manipulating her to help orchestrate the abuse of other women,” the records said.
Federal prosecutors ultimately decided against charging Kellen, though the internal deliberations that led to that outcome are unclear. Much of the legal analysis in the prosecution memos remains redacted in the publicly available versions of the DOJ records.
Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell remains the only other person charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes. She is serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison camp in Texas. Maxwell is presently seeking to have her conviction vacated or her sentence reduced.
Kellen — who has largely avoided public comment surrounding the Epstein investigation — told a reporter from a British paper who approached her on the street in New York in 2020 that she was “raped and abused weekly.”
“I have been made out to be such a monster — but it’s not true. I’m a victim of Jeffrey Epstein,” Kellen said, according to the U.K. Sun report.
An attorney who represented Kellen during discussions with federal prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment ahead of Kellen’s appearance in Washington, D.C.
In these photos released by the University of South Florida Police Department, Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy are shown. (University of South Florida Police Department)
(TAMPA, Fla.) — Investigators have listed that two University of Southern Florida doctoral students who went missing last week are endangered as the search continues.
Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, both 27, were last seen at separate locations in the Tampa area on April 16, according to the USF Police Department.
Officials received new information to warrant the upgrade to an endangered status, which indicates they are at risk of physical injury or death, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.
The sheriff did not provide any more details about the investigation or search efforts.
Limon and Bristy are friends, and a mutual acquaintance reported them missing, campus police said.
Limon, who is pursuing a degree in geography, environmental science and policy, was last seen at his Tampa residence at approximately 9 a.m. on April 16, according to police.
Bristy, who is studying chemical engineering, was last seen at the USF Tampa campus at the Natural & Environmental Sciences Building at approximately 10 a.m. that day, police said.
Both students have been entered into state and national missing persons’ databases.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to call the University of South Florida Police Department at 813-974-2628.
-ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
Kelly Ocampo believed her sister had been granted bond to be released from ICE detention. (Kelly Ocampo)
(DILLEY, Texas.) — Last month, Kelly Ocampo believed she received good news: Her 21-year-old pregnant sister had finally been granted bond and was going to be released from the family immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas.
The letter she received from a lawyer to whom she had paid more than $3,000 was written on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement letterhead and stated that the ICE bond for Maria Alejandra Gomez-Quiroz was approved.
“This notice confirms that the immigration bond ordered by the Immigration Court has been successfully paid through an official payment method authorized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” the letter stated.
When Ocampo received the letter, her sister had been in detention for a few weeks. But now, a month after she believed the bond was approved, her sister — who is five months pregnant — is still in federal immigration custody.
“It was a scam,” Ocampo told ABC News.
Ocampo believes she was scammed by an individual posing as an immigration attorney, and said her sister has now been detained for over 40 days. Ocampo and her family spent all their savings on the alleged lawyer to try to get her sister released, she said.
ABC News reached out to the person Ocampo says claimed to be a lawyer, but did not receive a response.
Ocampo told ABC News that her sister and partner were fleeing violent guerrillas in Colombia and were planning on applying for asylum in the U.S.
Gomez-Quiroz was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol at the border in June.
She is one of at least 500 people detained at Dilley and one of four pregnant women being held there as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown, according to lawmakers.
Her detention comes as a federal district judge in California has ordered the appointment of a special master and independent monitor to examine “time in custody” at the Dilley facility to ensure that the government is complying with guidelines established in previous legal settlements.
Immigration lawyers have argued that the administration is detaining people longer than allowed by previous court settlements.
Immigrant advocacy groups have also said that arrests and detentions of pregnant women violate an ICE directive stating that the agency should not “detain, arrest, or continue to detain individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing” except under exceptional circumstances.
ABC News previously reported on a different 21-year-old pregnant woman who has been detained at Dilly for more than 50 days with her 2-year-old son.
Immigrant advocates, medical professionals and lawmakers have previously raised concerns about conditions at the South Texas facility.
The order from the California judge also calls for the special master and independent monitor to monitor compliance with “adequate access to medical care” at Dilley.
DHS officials have previously disputed any allegations of substandard medical care at the detention facility.
A spokesperson for DHS said Gomez-Quiroz was convicted of illegal entry on July 6 and stated that she remains in ICE custody pending the outcome of her removal proceedings.
In response to concerns from Gomez-Quiroz’s family that she has been experiencing lower abdominal pain, a DHS spokesperson said, “It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment a person enters ICE custody.”
“She’s been very depressed,” Ocampo told ABC News. “My mom is desperate … this is a very hard situation.
