This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
In Minnesota, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an ICE officer who allegedly shot a Venezuelan immigrant in north Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, then lied about what happened. On Monday, the Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced federal agent Christian Castro will face four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
MARY MORIARTY: The four counts of assault are a result of Mr. Castro shooting through the front door of a residence with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four adults who were just inside the door. These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest.
AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis suffered a leg wound when Castro allegedly shot him through the door. The Trump administration initially claimed that Castro fired in self-defense after accusing Sosa-Celis and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. A federal judge later dismissed those charges after video evidence clearly contradicted it.
This comes as Hennepin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents during the Trump administration’s violent immigration enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also addressed reporters Monday.
ATTORNEY GENERAL KEITH ELLISON: There’s a long line of cases where state authorities have had to hold federal agents accountable for breaking state law. I think the first one is called In re Neagle, and they flow from there. And so, as was said earlier, there’s no such thing as absolute immunity.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in our New York studio by Emilia González Avalos. She is executive director of Unidos Minnesota, a grassroots organization that builds power with Minnesota’s working families to advance social, racial and economic justice. She’s here in New York. She just received the Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship on behalf of her group. Hands Off NYC also was a recipient this year.
Emilia, congratulations on the award. As you’re here, these charges are announced. Talk about the significance of them.
EMILIA GONZÁLEZ AVALOS: It is really important to demonstrate that there are opportunities to continue to embody a functioning democracy when the crimes of people are meeting consequences. And that is what the institution of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is trying to attempt here, after several months of the federal government obstructing investigation of both the murders of Renee Good, Alex Pretti and also the other crimes that these officers committed during Operation Metro Surge and Operation PARRIS.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what it means to have state officials, and what this video evidence was, so that people understand it’s the state of Minnesota that is going after the ICE officer. But in the case of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed as they bore witness to what was happening on the ground — Alex Pretti, the VA nurse; the mom, Renee Good — they’re having trouble, the state officials, getting cooperation from the federal government, who’s taken the evidence.
EMILIA GONZÁLEZ AVALOS: Correct. Since the beginning, they deployed false narratives, calling both Renee Good and Alex Pretti criminals, incendiaries, trying to polarize their identities for the public narrative that could benefit the federal government. And they were also trying to hide the overreach and the violence, the vitriol in which federal agents were behaving on the ground, the amount of erosion of people’s constitutional rights, the violations of people’s constitutional rights also during detention and through the detention and in the transportation of immigrants into Southern states for processing.
And so, when we see that Minnesota was a place where civil society was prepared to record and bear witness, and they brought all of these activities and recordings to the light — they shared in the social media, they shared with reporters, they shared with mainstream media. And so, we had the evidence. People, regular people, had the evidence that the narrative that the federal government was putting out there was not only false, but also quite opposite to the type of — to the type of misguiding, that they were trying to misguide the regular Americans into believing that the Minnesotans were unruly and radical.
And so, now the county prosecutor has evidence from regular people, a neighbor that recorded that actually nobody used a shovel, that there was no use of force by the Venezuelan immigrant, that in fact there was an agent that shot through the door when there was a baby inside the home, several children inside the home trying to figure out how to answer and ask if there was a warrant, if there was a judicial warrant, how to respond to the authorities. All that was recorded by neighbors. They were people trying to bear witness. They were eyewitnesses on the ground trying to bring these cases to light. And it was the people that equipped the county prosecutor to move the institution to embody the constitutional law, and the body of the institution of Hennepin County to actually prosecute the wrongdoing of these officers. And that is — that is what democracy looks like. It looks like separation of powers and getting material consequences of wrongdoing.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Emilia González Avalos, thank you for being with us, executive director of Unidos Minnesota, grassroots group that builds power with Minnesota’s working families to advance social, racial and economic justice. We’ll do an interview in Spanish and post it online at democracynow.org.
That does it for our show. I’ll be tonight at the IFC Center after the 6:00 screening of the film about Democracy Now!, Steal This Story, Please! I’ll be there with the director, Tia Lessin, and with V, formerly known as Eve Ensler. Tomorrow I’ll also be there for a Q&A after the 6:00 screening at IFC Center with our own Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh and the director, Tia Lessin, then to Boulder and Denver. Check our website.
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