U.S. Department of Justice fired career prosecutor who sought a stronger civil-rights charge against ICE officer in Minneapolis shooting

On September 3, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice fired Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans, the career federal prosecutor who had been handling the investigation into ICE officer Christian Castro over the January 14, 2026 shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis. The firing came a day after ProPublica published an email Evans had sent to Sosa-Celis's attorneys telling them to expect Castro to be charged "only with False Statements" rather than the color-of-law civil-rights offense Evans believed the evidence supported. "This is being directed by the Main Justice and the US Attorney," Evans wrote. "I objected in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could. It wasn't enough."

Federal prosecutors had been preparing to charge Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law — the same statute used against the Minneapolis officers charged in George Floyd's killing — before DOJ leadership in Washington directed the office to pursue only the lesser false-statements charge instead. A federal grand jury returned that six-count false-statements indictment against Castro the same week; it was unsealed September 4 and does not include a civil-rights count.

The Justice Department did not dispute that Evans was fired or that his email was authentic, but disputed his account of the investigation's status, with a DOJ official telling ProPublica the department "has not yet reached a conclusion on this matter." Sources described to CNN and the Associated Press said Evans was separately under investigation for allegedly obstructing the grand jury process, an allegation Evans has not had a public opportunity to answer; an autoreply from his Justice Department email said only that he was "on leave." Sosa-Celis's attorney, Robin Wolpert, said the department had "grossly undercharged this case."