Justice Department leaders in Washington quash planned civil rights charges against an ICE agent
Leaders at the Department of Justice in Washington quashed plans by the federal prosecutor handling the case to bring civil rights charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant and then lying about it, over that prosecutor's “strongest possible” objections, leaving a lesser false-statements charge that the prosecutor wrote could be filed soon and under seal.
What happened
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans, the prosecutor in Minnesota in charge of the case, told lawyers for Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and other victims late on Tuesday to prepare for the agent, Christian Castro, to be charged “only with False Statements,” according to an email reviewed by ProPublica. Evans wrote in that email that the decision was being directed by Main Justice and the U.S. attorney, and that he had objected “in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could.” Federal prosecutors in Minnesota had been preparing to charge Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law; those charges are similar to the ones brought against the Minneapolis police officers accused in George Floyd's killing and can carry hefty prison sentences. A Justice Department official said civil rights charges require consultation with the civil rights division in Washington and that charging decisions from such investigations are collaborative and deliberative, and said the agency “has not yet reached a conclusion on this matter.”
Why it matters
This sub-indicator tracks whether charging decisions stay with the prosecutors who built the case or are overridden from headquarters. What makes this instance unusually legible is that the line prosecutor put the source of the decision in writing to the victims' lawyers. A charging decision reversed in Washington over the case prosecutor's stated objection changes who decides whether a federal agent is answerable for using force — and the division whose consultation that decision required has been thinned under this administration.