The Long Tail of Operation Metro Surge
The mostly below-the-radar effort to block Minnesota’s effort to prosecute federal agents for alleged crimes committed during Operation Metro Surge finally burst into public view yesterday.
On behalf of Minnesota, state Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has refused to extradite ICE agent Christian Castro to face states charges arising from his pursuit of an undocumented immigrant that ended with him allegedly shooting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through the front door of a home in Minneapolis. Castro allegedly lied about the incident, claiming Sosa-Celis and another man attacked an ICE agent with a snow shovel and broom. Surveillance video later undermined that account, and the ICE agents involved have been under internal investigation by DHS.
The Jan. 14 non-fatal shooting of Sosa-Celis was sandwiched between the fatal ICE shootings that month of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. No one has been charged yet in those killings, but Minnesota continues to investigate and has succeeded in breaking through the Trump administration’s long-standing refusal to turn over evidence it gathered in those two shootings.
Castro was arrested in May in Texas on a nationwide warrant for the Minnesota charges. The new three-count lawsuit (which names as a co-defendant the sheriff of Cameron County, Texas, who has Castro in custody) filed in federal court in Brownsville seeks Castro’s extradition under the Constitution’s Extradition Clause, the federal Extradition Act, and the Texas Uniform Criminal Extradition Act.
Minnesota has been working since early June to secure Abbott’s sign-off on Castro’s extradition, according to the lawsuit. Repeated efforts to move the extradition paperwork off the governor’s desk have been slow rolled for more than two months now, Minnesota alleges. Meanwhile, extraditions of other defendants from Texas to Minnesota have proceeded as normal while the Castro extradition has languished.
But there’s more …
Trump DOJ Jumps In …
Meanwhile, in a separate case in which Minnesota is attempting to prosecute a federal agent for alleged misconduct, the Trump DOJ has leaped in to muddy the waters on behalf of ICE agent Gregory Morgan, Jr. of Maryland.
Morgan, who was charged in April with brandishing his service weapon in a road-rage-style incident, has sought to move the case against him from Minnesota state court to federal court. Under certain circumstances, federal law entitles federal officers to have their state criminal cases heard in federal court, though state prosecutors would still handle the case and it would be tried under Minnesota law.
The removal fight in the Morgan case has been bubbling for several weeks. There is a hot dispute between Morgan and Minnesota prosecutors over whether he is entitled to removal to federal court, mostly centered on whether Morgan was acting under color of his office at the time of the Feb. 5 incident in which he was driving in an unmarked rental vehicle back to the Whipple Federal Building with his partner at the end of their shift.
Into the middle of this dispute jumped the Trump DOJ last month, filing a Statement of Interest of the United States that weighed in on Morgan’s side to urge the removal of his case to federal court. But what really set things on a different course was that in its filing, the Trump DOJ alleged that the driver at whom Morgan brandished his weapon may have been guilty of criminal conduct for allegedly swerving to prevent Morgan from passing him illegally on the right shoulder of the roadway:
Given the probable cause to believe the driver committed a federal crime and may well have intended to do so again, Officer Morgan was justified in making a show of force.
The prospect of federal criminal prosecution of the driver prompted him and his passenger to assert their Fifth Amendment rights not to testify at the removal hearing without a grant of immunity. That has raised the prospect that the two victims won’t testify at trial either, which would undermine Minnesota’s ability to make its case.
Minnesota sought immunity for the victims to overcome their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves, but the Trump DOJ declined to provide them with immunity. Minnesota is now asking the federal court to grant use immunity. It’s a complicated legal dispute over whose immunity it is to give: Minnesota’s or the federal government’s. The underlying removal question is arguable, too. The removal hearing has been cancelled twice. It has not yet been rescheduled.
The complexity of the legal questions and the slow pace of the proceedings makes this hard to capture with banner headlines and 24/7 coverage. But if you’re looking for accountability for the worst abuses during Operation Metro Surge, this below-the-radar fight to prevent it is where to focus.
The Deportation-Surveillance Complex
Greg Sargent:
It’s time to familiarize yourselves with the names “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Keyhole.” If those nefarious phrases evoke to you the U.S. government’s domestic spying on leftist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s for good reason. The terms are coinages of today’s Department of Homeland Security, and they’re associated with a massive, covert surveillance effort that DHS unleashed earlier this year to track anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump’s violent paramilitary invasion triggered months of intense civil conflict.
Midterms Watch
Florida-Senate: A stunning win in the Democratic primary by longshot state Rep. Angie Nixon, a newly converted Democratic Socialist who was outspent 16-1 by Alex Vindman and did not run a single TV ad in the state, but still prevailed 56%-44%. Nixon will seek to unseat appointed Sen. Ashley Moody (R) in the special general election to finish Marco Rubio’s term.
Florida-07: Rep. Cory Mills was too sleazy even for Republicans, losing 47%-34% to former local TV news anchor Ryan Elijah in the GOP primary.
Alaska-Senate: In the unusual top-four-advance primary, former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) outdrew incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) 48%-43% in a preview of the general election. The other Dan Sullivan drew 2%.
2 Dan Sullivans Prompts Criminal Probe?
With the news that federal grand jury subpoenas have been issued over the campaign of the other Dan Sullivan to unseat incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) in the Alaska Senate race, election law expert Rick Hasen cautions about the First Amendment implications of criminalizing this kind of election finagling which, as he notes, happens all the time:
I don’t see how the government could criminalize his running for office for having impure motives. And if it could do so, then it could be a crime every time that the Republican Party backs a Green Party candidate, or Democrats support a MAGA candidate in a primary in the hopes that the candidate would be weaker against a Democrat in the general election. This stuff happens all the time.
To put a blunter point on all of this: The Alaska Senate seat is key to Democrats’ difficult quest to win the Senate. Sen. Sullivan losing votes to the other Sullivan imperils that seat and puts President Trump at greater risk of facing a Democratic-controlled Congress for the rest of his term. Trump controls the DOJ with an iron fist. The DOJ is now investigating the matter.
Ipso Facto Collusion
Elaborating on many of themes from last Thursday’s Morning Memo, Harry Litman explains the inanity of the Trump DOJ suddenly parachuting into the anti-weaponization slush fund/IRS immunity case:
The best way for the Department to support Trump while being nominally opposed was to stay out of the fray. It worked for a time, until its very absence became a factor in the determination that the case was a collusive fraud on the court. Now it has to execute an impossible two-step: supporting Trump in every particular while feigning opposition to him.
DOJ Whistleblower Calls Out Ivy League Attack
Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, is blowing the whistle on what everyone already knew: The Trump administration’s Title VI investigation into alleged antisemitism on Ivy League campuses was pretextual.
Van Erem’s allegations are detailed in a letter that her attorneys sent to Congress while seeking whistleblower protection.
As the WaPo notes:
Her disclosures Tuesday could bolster concerns raised by critics that the administration’s self-proclaimed push to combat antisemitism on campus was in fact an effort to punish schools it deemed ideologically opposed to its agenda. Van Erem’s account raised questions about past settlements the administration has struck with universities under investigation as well as pending probes that have yet to be resolved.
Van Erem says she resigned from the Justice Department in May 2025 rather than participate in politically motivated investigations.
Face Palm of the Day
The head of the once-famed DOJ Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, is openly galavanting in DC with Tina Peters, the convicted election denier from Colorado:
Quote of the Day
“I’m just going to be honest here. I’m not that informed on national security.”—Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC), during a TV debate ahead of next week’s runoff in the GOP primary to fill her late brother’s seat
The video:
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Darline Graham...Jaysus save us! But, it's South Carolina, and if the stunningly thick Tim Scott can be a senator, why not Ms Graham? Cannot be worse than Tommy "Coach" Tuberville (MAGA-AL), whose coming departure from the US Senate raises its collective IQ several points...that is, until Graham is sworn in.
It’s crazy to me that in the 60’s you had to find a way to get cases from state courts in the South into federal court to actually get any justice - and now you have to fight to keep them in state court because the DOJ has been entirely captured by fascist apparatchiks.