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The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office issued a nationwide arrest warrant on Monday for the ICE agent who allegedly shot a Venezuelan immigrant in north Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge and then lied about the circumstances that led to the shooting.

Christian J. Castro, 52, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with four counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime. The shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis on Jan. 14 came one week after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good and set off another wave of intense protests amid the largest immigration enforcement action in United States history.

Sosa-Celis and his roommate, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, were initially charged with assaulting a federal officer as Trump administration officials widely publicized their mug shots and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called their alleged crime an act of “attempted murder.” The charges were later dropped when video evidence directly contradicted the story given by federal officers.

In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune before announcing the charges, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Castro was identified as the shooter through two sources: a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension interview at the site of the shooting and medical records from Castro’s visit to the hospital after the shooting.

Federal prosecutors have asked to dismiss the criminal case against a woman accused of assaulting federal law enforcement officers in January during Operation Metro Surge.

In a brief motion, special assistant U.S. attorney Robert Tucker asked the court on Thursday to dismiss the case against Nasra Ahmed. The motion did not detail any reason behind the decision, but prosecutors in other court records refer to the request being made “in the interest of justice.”

Jordan Kushner, Ahmed’s attorney, said the dismissal appeared to be the result of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s inability to “timely comply” with their discovery obligations and lambasted the case in an emailed statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“The incident is among countless violations of human rights committed by the Trump regime’s paramilitary thugs,” Kushner wrote. “The prosecution exacerbates the injustice.”

Ahmed was among more than a dozen people charged with assaults on agents during the height of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. Before the charges were unsealed in court, then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted names and photos of the group on social media, referring to them as “rioters” and accused them of “allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement.”

Charges against several Minnesotans accused of assaulting federal agents during the surge operation have been dismissed. At least six people saw their cases dismissed in January and February, including a woman whom Bondi depicted in a social media post among other shackled anti-ICE protesters.

Legislation meant to help address the type of fraud at the heart of a sprawling crisis in Minnesota is headed to Gov. Tim Walz’s desk after sailing through a final legislative vote Monday.

The bill establishes an independent office of inspector general to investigate and root out fraud in state programs. State senators approved it last year, but it didn’t make it out of the Minnesota House in the waning hours of the session.

Walz is expected to sign the bill.

It creates an option to establish a law enforcement branch in the office that was central to the bipartisan compromise struck as the bill made its way through committee. Some Democrats have expressed concern that establishing that branch in the office would duplicate efforts already undertaken by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

But it delays its establishment until 2028 and leaves it to the next Legislature to fund after this fall’s elections.

Matt Little, a former state legislator and mayor of Lakeville, won the Second District DFL endorsement May 9 after delegates opted for a progressive candidate to replace moderate Rep. Angie Craig.

His victory means a three-way Democratic primary will ensue in August.

Shortly before Little won the endorsement on the first ballot, his two opponents, state Sen. Matt Klein and state Rep. Kaela Berg, said they would remain in the race.

Delegates wrestled Saturday at Burnsville High School over whether to keep the status quo of the purple south-metro district by backing Klein — who shares the same brand of moderate Democratic politics as the district’s outgoing congresswoman — or take a chance on a progressive by backing Little or Berg.

North Memorial Health plans to merge with Sanford Health in the latest deal for an out-of-state nonprofit group to take corporate control over hospitals and clinics operating in Minnesota.

The transaction, which South Dakota-based Sanford is announcing Friday, includes a $600 million investment for services in the Twin Cities. It could help stabilize North Memorial’s flagship hospital in Robbinsdale, where chronic budget woes prompted the health system’s CEO last year to warn of potential service cuts and a possible shutdown.

Sanford Health proposed deals in 2013 and 2022 that would have brought the health system to the Twin Cities via mergers with Fairview Health Services. Those proposals fell apart amid opposition to a South Dakota nonprofit taking Fairview’s control of University of Minnesota Medical Center, a mainstay state institution with deep public-sector roots.

North Memorial’s facilities, by contrast, have always been run by a private nonprofit group, not the state. The Sanford-North merger proposal comes at the beginning of an apparent surge in health care mergers and acquisitions, as hospitals and clinics try to stabilize their finances by getting bigger.

The North Memorial deal still requires approval from state and federal regulators.

Four pairs of white-painted kids shoes hang on a fence at Valley View Elementary School in Columbia Heights, but their owners are absent.

That’s because each pair represents a child detained by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge. One of them is Liam Ramos, who was detained with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, at this approximate location on Jan. 20.

“We don’t want people to forget,” said Anthony Marchetti of Minneapolis, as he installed the shoes with his son, Luciano. “We want people to remember and to continue to fight injustice.”

The white-painted shoes mark one of 50 locations across the Twin Cities metro area where organizers say federal immigration agents detained, shot, killed or committed violent acts against people during Operation Metro Surge. They’ll start on other locations in the state in July.

Minneapolis-based artist Laura Migliorino came up with ICE Ghost Shoes 26: A Remembrance. She and her wife jumped into community resistance during Operation Metro Surge, but wanted to do something more long-lasting.

“I like the idea of standing in someone’s shoes,” Migliorino said. “When you walk or drive past the shoes, you see exactly what that person saw when they were in fear of their life.”

When St. Paul police launched a nonfatal shooting unit in 2024, the improvements came almost immediately: The department’s clearance rate for solving nonfatal shootings nearly doubled in just one year.

In an effort to replicate that success across Minnesota, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and other local officials on May 7 pushed for the state Legislature to pass a bill that would put $1 million toward a statewide grant program aimed to improve investigations of nonfatal gun violence.

Created in January 2024, St. Paul’s nonfatal unit investigates shootings with the same resources and intensity as its homicide unit. Nonfatal shootings in St. Paul dropped 62% from 2024 to 2025.

One of the benefits of focusing on solving nonfatal shootings just like homicides, officials said Thursday, is that it can help with reducing other crime rates since it leads to the arrests of potential repeat offenders.

More smoky skies are expected over Minnesota this summer as forecasts warn of a particularly nasty wildfire season across the continent.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is predicting about two weeks’ worth of days affected by wildfire smoke and another handful of days affected by unhealthy ozone levels.

Homeowners associations across Minnesota will see their powers diminished under a far-reaching “HOA Bill of Rights” approved by state lawmakers this week.

The bipartisan measure that runs more than 50 pages is aimed at protecting homeowners by requiring more transparency from HOAs, limiting their ability to levy fines and foreclose properties, and other consumer protection provisions.

It will affect the roughly 8,000 HOAs across the state and the more than 1.5 million Minnesotans who live in them.

Former Metro Transit Police Chief Ernest Morales III agreed to surrender his Minnesota peace officer license, effectively barring him from serving in state law enforcement, after an investigation determined that he created a hostile work environment.

The Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) found “reasonable grounds” that Morales engaged in sexual harassment and failed to self-report his misconduct.

As part of the stipulation and consent order, finalized April 6, Morales agreed to not seek reinstatement.

That type of sanction is seemingly rare, especially for top officials.

He was placed on administrative leave in August 2024 after allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment. Morales resigned, amid an internal investigation, on Sept. 23, 2024 — prior to being interviewed about his conduct.

The publicly filed POST board stipulation order, first reported by KARE-11, describes how Morales made several derogatory remarks about women in the workplace. He once used a crude acronym in referring to a woman civilian employee, records show.

On another occasion, Morales commented to two officers that a civilian employee “used sex to advance her career.”

After two years away as the SoMi Art Fair in the Bachman’s parking lot, the Uptown Art Fair is back ― but it won’t be on Hennepin Avenue.

The Uptown Association announced this week that the 62nd Uptown Art Fair will be back Aug. 7-9 in a new location: Lake of the Isles Parkway. Its tagline is “Art in the Isles,” said Uptown Association’s new executive director Stefani Pennaz.

Charges against two Brooklyn Park women who sprang into action to help save an ICE agent having a siezure have been dismissed.

Despite their heroics in January, Tiffany “Tippy” Amundson, 39, and Heather Zemien, 55, were charged at the time with assaulting, resisting and impeding officers, according federal court records.

But late last month, all charges against the women were terminated and “there will be no further proceedings on this matter,” according to documents filed in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis.

Zeimen and Amundson were detained on Jan. 22 and were being driven to the Whipple Federal Building when one of the agents involved in the transport became ill.

The women recognized the agent was having a seizure and asked the other agents in the vehicle to call 911. At one point the women were released from their handcuffs and rendered aid until first responders arrived.

The women were eventually released after arriving at the Whipple Building, but citations were issued. Motions to have the charges dropped were filed in April and finally approved on April 22, court documents show.

Before undergoing treatment for prostate cancer last summer, Leif Hembre says he was careful to avoid huge bills by checking that Mayo Clinic was in his Medica health insurance network.

The St. Paul resident went ahead with a procedure after hearing there was no network barrier, and he’s been reassured ever since by his good prognosis.

But within a few months of treatment, Hembre’s insurer started sending him checks in addition to paper statements saying “this is not a bill.” The puzzling turn prompted troubling questions about his health coverage.

It turned out Mayo had been out-of-network, Medica said, and the Rochester health care provider eventually said Hembre owed more than $76,000 because his insurer was refusing to pay all costs. The clinic held off trying to collect, but Hembre found himself more worried about the debt hanging over him than his physical health.

His story illustrates a sentiment that’s all too common among cancer patients: Paying for oncology care can sometimes be more stressful than cancer itself.

“This shouldn’t be the way it works,” Hembre said.

A reporter sent questions to Medica and Mayo on April 9. Within two days, Hembre got a call from his health insurer saying he would owe nothing.

The problems bearing down on Minneapolis — like collapsing downtown building values, open drug use in commercial areas and a school district teetering on the brink of insolvency — need urgent and creative responses that span jurisdictions. But it often feels like Frey has become a goalie blocking far-left policy ideas, while somehow escaping much accountability for conditions in the streets.

The quandary of Frey was on full display at a recent news conference about safety in Uptown. Frey proclaimed to the cameras that we “can’t be allowing open drug use on our streets,” when his own administration has presided over the disorder that has consumed the area.

A Hennepin County judge has ordered U.S. Senate candidate Royce White not to contact his ex-wife and son, finding the former basketball star liable for abuse that left his family “plainly in fear.”

The order for protection prohibits White from contact with his ex-wife for 50 years and with his teenage son for two years.

Judge Kristen Marttila issued the order in February and wrote that White’s ex-wife — who divorced him in 2015 and lived with him from 2022 until August of last year — is “utterly at a loss for how else to gain peace from him.”

This is the third order for protection that White’s ex-wife has obtained against him, but the first time he has been ordered to stay away from his son. They also share a daughter together, who he is allowed to continue seeing.

The order for protection is a civil ruling but if White violates it he can face additional criminal charges. White appealed the decision on April 16.

The petition was filed last December by White’s ex-wife and alleged that he had routinely abused her and their son and that it “has been escalating towards me and our children, making me scared for all of our safety.”

She said White threatened her in public, hit her in private and traumatized their children with his behavior.

Marttila found that several of the allegations were true, including incidents where White abused his son at high school basketball practice.