There is a piece of paper on a desk in Austin. It has been there for a while.

Signing it is, by all accounts, routine — the kind of thing a governor's office does dozens of times a year without anyone noticing. Until it's signed, a criminal case in Minnesota cannot move.

The defendant is a federal immigration agent. The governor is Greg Abbott.

What Christian Castro is charged with

Christian Castro is an ICE agent. He is charged in Hennepin County, Minnesota, with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

According to the county attorney's office, in January he shot Julio Sosa-Celis through the front door of a house.

Note the second charge alongside the assault counts: falsely reporting a crime. Prosecutors are alleging not just that an agent shot a man through a door, but that he then lied about what happened.

Castro was arrested two months ago. He is still in Texas. He has not been sent to Minnesota to answer any of it.

Why he's still in Texas

Extradition between states requires the sending state's governor to sign off. It's a formality in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Tom Hogan, an assistant professor at South Texas College of Law, put it plainly to ABC13:

"Normally that just happens sort of in the ordinary course of things. It can take some time, and it can be contentious when people have political disagreements, basically."

Castro's paperwork is sitting, unsigned, in Abbott's office.

On Thursday, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty wrote to Abbott asking him to sign it immediately. Her letter states:

"The process has been initiated in full compliance with both Texas and Minnesota statutes, and all procedural requirements have been met."

It was not her first letter.

Moriarty's letter says court proceedings are at a standstill while Castro sits in Texas. Her office's only public comment: "We look forward to Mr. Castro arriving in Minnesota to begin court proceedings."

Hogan's read on the situation was blunt — the fact that a prosecutor is now writing letters to a governor tells him a political issue is holding up an administrative step.

Abbott's answer

ABC13's 13 Investigates asked Abbott's office two straightforward questions: do you intend to sign the paperwork, and why hasn't it been signed already?

The full response:

"The Office of the Governor does not comment on pending extradition matters."

That is not a denial. It is not an explanation of a backlog, a legal question, or a procedural defect. It's the door closing.

The standard Abbott applies to everyone else

Greg Abbott has built a career on the proposition that people accused of crimes must face justice, and that officials who stand in the way of law enforcement are the problem. That's the whole argument: nobody should be shielded from prosecution by a sympathetic government.

Here, a state has charged a man with shooting someone through a front door and lying about it, has completed every legal requirement, and has asked twice. The one thing standing in the way is a Texas signature.

If a Democratic governor sat for two months on paperwork that would send an accused shooter to face charges, Abbott would have a press conference and a lawsuit ready by Tuesday.

This is a pattern, not an incident

This isn't Abbott's first careful silence around a shooting by federal immigration agents in Texas.

When ICE officers shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a 52-year-old Houston-area construction worker with no criminal record who federal authorities later admitted wasn't even their target — Abbott said nothing for eight days, then offered that "any loss of life is tragic."

The pattern is consistent, and it's the opposite of tough on crime. When the person accused wears a federal badge, the Governor of Texas gets quiet, slow, and procedural.

Why Texans should care about a Minnesota case

You might reasonably ask what a shooting in Hennepin County has to do with Texas.

This: the same federal agency operates in Houston, in El Paso, in the Rio Grande Valley. Whether its agents can be prosecuted by a state when they're accused of shooting someone is a question with a very direct Texas answer coming.

And right now, the Governor of Texas is quietly demonstrating that the answer might be no — not because a court ruled anything, but because he can just not sign.

Julio Sosa-Celis was shot through a door. Prosecutors filed five charges. A county attorney has done everything the law requires, twice. Two months later, the case can't start.

Because of a signature.

We deserve better.

Source

Mycah Hatfield, County attorney in Minneapolis asks Abbott to authorize ICE agent's extradition 'immediately', ABC13 Houston / 13 Investigates, August 1, 2026.