Did an ICE agent spin up a wild story after shooting a Venezuelan national in Minnesota early this year? Or has he been scapegoated by a state filled with “rage” over immigration law enforcement in general?

Both federal and Hennepin County prosecutors have formally charged Christian Castro, 52, for allegedly lying to investigators, but one of his attorneys, David Lindenmuth, told Blaze News that his client has been unfairly targeted by “rabid” officials looking for someone to blame for other controversies associated with Operation Metro Surge.

‘He was in pursuit of people in a vehicle who fled. … There was a person on that porch that apparently had a weapon at some point.’

“They went through some pretty serious things up there with the federal law enforcement being sent up there. There’s a couple of high-profile deaths,” Lindenmuth said. “And because of that, I think that what happened, to be quite honest … [is] Mr. Castro is basically the one that they chose to prosecute.”

Lindenmuth did not name names regarding the “high-profile deaths,” but the incident involving Castro occurred just one week after Renee Good was fatally shot on January 7.

On January 14, the Department of Homeland Security reported that an unnamed federal immigration officer had “fired a defensive shot to defend his life” during an immigration operation in Minnesota.

The officer had sustained a brutal attack, during which three individuals “ambushed” him and struck him with a “broom handle” and a “snow shovel,” the DHS claimed on January 14.

Now, however, the Department of Justice claims the officer made the whole thing up. On September 2, a federal grand jury indicted Castro on six counts of making a materially false statement.

RELATED: Trump threatens Insurrection Act after ambushed ICE agent shoots illegal alien: ‘Put an end to the travesty’

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The federal indictment claims that on January 14, Castro told the FBI that while he was attempting to arrest one man, a second “unknown man grabbed a red broom off the front porch,” “a third unknown man came out of the house, grabbed a black snow shovel,” and all three ganged up on him.

Castro then claimed that “he tried to block strikes from the broom to his face with his left hand and reached for his gun,” according to the indictment. The men then bolted for a nearby residence, and Castro “lifted his back off the ground and fired one round from his gun in the general direction of the men at the same time they started running.”

Castro estimated to the FBI that he struggled on the ground with the original subject, identified as “A.A.,” for “approximately three minutes,” the indictment said.

According to federal prosecutors, none of Castro’s claims are true. Instead, prosecutors claim: No one struck Castro with a broom or a snow shovel at that time; there was no third person involved; Castro was standing when he shot through the front door of the duplex residence, where the two men had already hidden themselves; and the scuffle on the ground lasted only 11 seconds.

A probable cause statement from Hennepin County indicated that, following a 911 call, Minneapolis police took “remote-control of a city camera” and angled it at the residence in time to capture much of the incident.

Castro’s bullet struck one subject, identified as Julio Sosa-Celis in news reports but referred to as “J.S.-C.” in the federal indictment. Sosa-Celis was wounded in the leg but has recovered from his injury.

The indictment describes J.S.-C. as a 24-year-old “citizen of Venezuela” who resided in the duplex.

The probable cause statement claimed that at the time of the shooting, Sosa-Celis and A.A. “were residing in Minnesota lawfully, having been granted ‘Temporary Protected Status’ by the United States Department of Homeland Security.”

Sosa-Celis was arrested shortly after the incident, but all charges against him have since been dropped.

Though Lindenmuth admits that Castro “fired his weapon” that fateful night, Lindenmuth insisted that Castro is “innocent” and “had no intent to lie to federal agents.”

“The federal government has to prove that Mr. Castro lied to them, and then the state government has to prove that he actually committed a crime,” he explained to Blaze News. “The facts as I understand them is that he was in pursuit of people in a vehicle who fled, right? They fled. Then they fled on foot. There was a person on that porch that apparently had a weapon at some point.”

In the county probable cause statement, the original subject of the operation — whom the federal indictment referred to as “A.A.” — admitted to investigators on January 14 that he fled from the agents in his vehicle because “he feared for his life” and led them on a 25-minute chase. Once he arrived at his residence, he made a run for the front door but “slipped on the ice” and was then “tackled” by the ICE agent.

Video of the incident also shows that prior to the shooting, Sosa-Celis “stepped onto the front lawn of the home holding a snow shovel,” the probable cause statement indicated.

Castro was originally indicted by the Hennepin County district attorney back in May on four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

He was arrested following the federal indictment and booked into Hennepin County Jail. Jail records show only the state charges.

Castro pled not guilty to the federal charges on Friday. He was released from jail after posting a $200,000 bond.

Castro is scheduled to appear in court again for the state charges on November 3. The DHS has suspended him without pay, Lindenmuth confirmed.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the DHS, the Hennepin County Prosecutor’s Office, and the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL) did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.

RELATED: Anti-ICE aid fund in Minnesota shuts down — and you can probably guess the reason why

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Lindenmuth characterized the charges as a miscarriage of justice against a devoted American patriot who has been turned into a “political pawn” by bad actors.

“Mr. Castro was a 13-year veteran in the Army, a combat veteran deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he received a 100% disability rating as a result of his service for 70% for PTSD, 30% for traumatic brain injury, where he was hit by the last wave of a suicide bomber on the American embassy over there. And so this is a person who was injured serving his country,” Lindenmuth claimed, adding that Castro has also spent a decade as an immigration officer.

“He has given his life to serving this country, and he’s not [been given] the benefit of the protections of the presumption of innocence. … Basically he’s being tried out in public by the state of Minnesota, and it’s sad to see.

“That’s not how we’re supposed to operate.”

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​Department of homeland security, Minnesota, Department of justice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Politics 

More school districts are banning smartphones and AI use in classrooms, and more parents are understandably pleased. They picture learning environments returning to the good old days of pen and paper and actual eye contact.

But don’t pop the champagne just yet. Behind the crackdown, school administrators are building a corporate surveillance dragnet that would make a Cold War spy agency blush.

This diabolical system routinely harvests sensitive personal details about your home life.

American children are growing up inside an all-knowing, all-seeing system bankrolled directly by local tax dollars. A recent report from the Brookings Institution reveals that 88% of teachers report their schools use student monitoring tools on classroom devices.

Worse yet, 42% of those teachers confirm the tracking follows kids right out the front door and directly into their bedrooms after the final bell rings. The local school board effectively installed electronic ankle monitors on America’s children — all in the name of educational progress and student safety, of course.

A secret scandal

The process usually starts with a sneaky sales representative who convinces a school board to purchase thousands of cheap laptops or tablets for daily use. To keep kids off video game sites, administrators install intrusive software like GoGuardian, Bark, or Gaggle. These platforms record search histories. They read private messages and log physical coordinates. They track keystrokes in real time. Digital hall pass apps log the exact minute a child leaves a classroom to use the drinking fountain or restroom, generating a permanent, timestamped record of students’ daily body functions. Although America is not China, what’s happening in Beijing is now happening in Boston.

Parents were never asked for their consent. Under federal law, they don’t have to be. School boards signed multiyear software contracts with private operators without sending a single permission slip home to mom and dad. Intoxicated by their own sense of importance, administrators assumed absolute authority over your child’s digital activity, completely bypassing traditional parental rights.

This diabolical system operates under the wonderful promise of keeping kids safe, yet it routinely harvests sensitive personal details about your home life. Powerful algorithms scan student emails, private documents, and home web searches for keywords related to mental health, domestic arguments, and more. When an automated system flags a few words typed late on a Sunday night, it generates an instant alert sent directly to school officials or local police departments. A teen typing out a frustrated diary entry on a school-issued laptop suddenly finds a police car parked in the driveway for a late-night wellness check.

RELATED: They just announced the ultimate freedom phone — and getting your hands on it won’t be easy

Bloomberg/Getty Images

The information these devices generate doesn’t stay safely locked inside the principal’s office file cabinet. Third-party software companies store student location records and behavioral histories on commercial cloud servers. Many of these tech vendors reserve the right to share broad student metrics with data brokers, software developers, and research institutions of questionable merit. The private details of your child’s daily routine become valuable fuel for commercial products, helping train corporate algorithms on your family’s personal habits without your knowledge.

Restoring privacy

Few things in life are guaranteed, but one certainty is that surveillance tech always expands beyond its original purpose. Systems initially built to block bad websites now use computer cameras to track eye movements and score attention levels during standardized state tests. Automated systems process this data to generate risk scores for individual students, flagging kids as potential troublemakers before they even finish middle school. A minor behavioral mark recorded on a classroom tablet can become a permanent digital footprint that follows a child throughout his academic years.

This is not healthy, and it’s certainly not an environment that any sane parent should want his child educated in. It must stop, but it won’t happen without a clear plan and the will to enforce it.

Restoring privacy to the American classroom requires direct, decisive action from parents and local communities. Parents can immediately opt their kids out of school-issued laptops by submitting formal written requests to school principals. They are well within their rights to demand traditional paper textbooks, physical workbooks, and standard notebooks instead. Concerned voters must show up at local school board meetings to demand strict district rules that ban student tracking outside school hours, forbid third-party data sharing, and require mandatory written parental consent before any new software enters a building.

Genuine freedom depends on raising independent children who know what it means to live without an overseer monitoring their every move. If parents fail to draw a firm line now, the public school system will help raise a generation of compliant citizens who accept constant surveillance as just another part of everyday life. Again, America is not China. But step inside schools across America, and the comparison suddenly looks far less absurd.

​Surveillance, Tech 

Arizona Cardinals defensive back Kei’Trel Clark became the second Muslim player to receive a fine from the NFL in the past week or so.

Following a letter from the league, the 25-year-old is searching for answers, but he probably doesn’t have to look too hard.

‘I got to report to God at the end of my days on the day of judgement!’

Clark posted the NFL’s correspondence on his Instagram page, telling him he was “in violation of the NFL Uniform and Equipment Rules.”

“Specifically, you displayed a personal message on your eye black,” the letter continued, per the Instagram story cited by the Daily Mail.

Clark was spotted on the field on September 13 against the Los Angeles Chargers wearing the message “Glory Be 2 God …” with a peace sign in the middle.

This message appears to directly violate Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rulebook, which states, “Players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages” during game day when the player is visible to the stadium or television audience.

As a result, Clark was fined $6,651.

Clark shared a screenshot of the letter with a picture of himself, writing, “I need answers. 6.6k for Giving God the Glory.”

He later added, “I got to report to God at the end of my days on the day of judgement! I’ll always give God the Glory and out loud. All good.”

RELATED: The NFL says it could expand with multiple teams — and you won’t like where they’re going

Kenneth Richmond/Getty Images

At the same time, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was fined following a loss to the Buffalo Bills for having the name “Hind Rajab” written on his eye black during the game on September 13, per Fox News.

Hind Rajab is the name of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who was allegedly shot and killed in her family’s car by Israeli forces in 2024 during the Israel-Palestine war.

For that, Al-Shaair received an $11,492 fine.

On Sunday, Al-Shaair was spotted during warm-ups wearing a different message on his eye black: “Wafaa Akila.” A translation through Arabic123.com says Wafaa means “completeness, fulfillment, and loyalty,” while Akila means “a woman who is thoughtful and articulate in expressing her views and opinions on important matters.”

Any fines for that message could be announced later this week.

Al-Shaair was also fined $11,593 in January for wearing “Stop the Genocide” on his eye black during a playoff game. He told reporters at the time he knew he was in violation of the rules.

“I knew that that was a fine. I understood what I was doing,” he said before expressing some confusion.

“But I was told that if I wore that in the game I would be pulled out the game, so I think that was probably the part I was confused about.”

RELATED: Travis Kelce duped by Indian illegal immigrant in massive Ponzi scheme

Brooke Sutton/Getty Images

Clark did not appear to be fined for wearing eye black in September 2025 that read, “Inshallah …,” one of his many public expressions of his Muslim faith.

In a 2025 Instagram post he wrote, “I put my heart into this $h!t, it’s always been bigger then me. Only Allah Knows.”

As well, the front of his Instagram page contains Arabic writing that, when translated by Google, reads, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.”

It also features links to photos of Quranic passages.

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​Nfl, Football, Islam, Muslim, Sports 

Pollsters and prediction markets are prophesying overwhelming Democratic success in the midterm election, which is now seven weeks away. CNN admitted in a recent analysis, however, that those hoping for a blue tidal wave might be left greatly disappointed in November.

Doom and gloom for the GOP

Polymarket presently suggests that Democrats have a 62% chance of taking the U.S. Senate and a 92% chance of taking the House. Kalshi similarly forecasts Democrats taking over the House and Senate.

‘It’s going to be close.’

According to the Economist’s latest midterm forecast, Democrats have a 93% chance of flipping the House and securing a 238-197 majority, and a 59% chance of taking the Senate.

The latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Democrats enjoying an eight-point edge on the generic ballot.

A recent NBC News poll found that while the Democratic Party is viewed more negatively than both President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, 50% of respondents favored Democratic control of Congress.

RELATED: The cost of living is coming for Congress

The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Pollster Nate Silver argued on Sunday that the idea of the Senate as a “toss-up” is “misaligned with the long history of strong opposition performance in midterm elections, especially when the incumbent president is as unpopular as Trump.”

Blue disappointment?

In light of recent polling, the average price of gasoline sitting at an estimated $4.44 per gallon, and the sense that the midterm vote serves as a referendum on Trump’s policies, hope is mounting on the left that a blue wave will wash away the Republican trifecta in Washington.

That hope may, however, be unfounded.

CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein suggested just over a week ago that Democrats might not be in a position to exploit the president’s waning public approval, Americans’ economic woes, and growing political discontent.

In addition to noting that many Democratic candidates are not attracting the numbers of voters who disapproved of Trump in 2018 and 2020, Brownstein wrote that despite disenchantment among some voters on the right, few appear willing to turn coat.

“The share of non-MAGA Republicans who say they are still voting for Republicans this fall is about 20 points higher than the portion who approve of Trump’s performance,” Brownstein wrote, citing GOP pollster Micah Roberts’ analysis of CNBC survey data.

“There are a lot of people who may think, ‘I don’t like Trump but … I don’t agree with the policies of the other party and where they would take us,'” said Roberts.

While Republican voters might not cast votes for Democratic candidates, Brownstein noted that the GOP still faces the possibility that disenchanted Republican voters might decide not to vote at all — a big problem given the enthusiasm among likely Democratic voters.

Voter enthusiasm might threaten Republicans’ hold on power; however, the GOP’s redistricting efforts have placed breakers before any blue wave.

After all, far fewer House seats are competitive now than were in 2018, and 13 House Democrats must now defend districts where Trump netted at least five points more than his share of the national vote, said Brownstein.

The CNN analyst cast greater doubt on Democrats’ senatorial ambitions, noting that “of the Republican-held seats Democrats are most seriously contesting, Maine is the only one in a state that supported Harris; North Carolina is the sole other state on the Senate map where Harris even came close. Trump prevailed by double digits in every other state whose Senate seat Democrats are targeting.”

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the GOP — not similarly hard up for cash like the Democrats — also enjoys a financial advantage Brownstein reckons could be wielded to limit Democratic gains.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson told the New York Post earlier this month that instead of a blue or red wave this November, there will be “30 knife fights in 30 dark alleys.”

“It’s just a handful of races, but every one of them will be decided by a few thousand votes. It’s going to be close,” added Hudson.

The Cook Political Report projects that the GOP and the Democratic Party are set to win 208 and 205 House seats, respectively, and marked 21 seats as toss-ups.

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​Cnn, Polling, Midterm election, Blue wave, Senate, House, Republican party, Democratic party, Donald trump, Politics