The Chicago woman who Border Patrol agents shot five times last October called the incident an attempted “execution” in a public forum Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen and Chicago resident, was shot Oct. 4 during a confrontation with Customs and Border Patrol agents in Brighton Park in southwest Chicago.
Court documents state that Martinez’s vehicle collided with a federal agent’s, although it is undetermined which vehicle initiated the collision. Martinez’s lawyers maintained she was not at fault for the accident and never intentionally hit the CBP agent’s vehicle. But the Department of Homeland Security quickly spun the incident as an “ambush” on federal agents, and Martinez was charged with assault – a charge that a judge has since dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled.
“On Friday, I was teaching the young children at the Montessori School, and we were singing and dancing and getting ready for spooky season, preparing fall activities to do the following week,” Martinez said. “On Saturday, my own government was calling me a domestic terrorist, and I was in federal detention centers with the bullet holes all over my body.”
“Domestic terrorist” is the same label DHS uses to refer to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two citizens shot and killed by DHS agents in Minneapolis last month.
“I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas Gonzalez. I am Keith Porter,” Martinez said. “They should all be here today.” Gonzalez was shot and killed by federal immigration agents in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago, and Porter was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve in a suburb of Los Angeles.
Public forum
Martinez testified with two other citizens who accused Department of Homeland Security agents of assault.
The panel also included the attorney for the family of Good, who was shot and killed by DHS agents in January, and an expert on law enforcement use of force tactics, who both raised concerns on the force federal immigration agents have used across the nation.
Good’s two brothers also spoke.
This is the second public forum organized by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Californian Democrat. The forums are part of an inquiry the pair opened in October investigating the detention of U.S. citizens by immigration agents.
“This is not normal, and this is neither professionally nor democratically acceptable,” said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and current public safety professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law.
“We see a lack of interagency collaboration or even basic communication, reducing both efficiency and public trust,” he added. “We see poor tactics that put community members and federal agents themselves in unnecessary danger, and we see profound failures of leadership after critical incidents that never should have happened.”
Blumenthal and Garcia opened the forum by asking Congress to support allowing citizens to sue federal agents for actions taken against them.
“When you serve this country in an elected office or in uniform, you swear an oath to the Constitution, you pledge to work for all Americans,” Garcia said. “You don’t get a license to kill, and there’s no absolute immunity. We’re going to stand up for the rights of our communities, and we believe strongly that we need to hear the stories of those that are in front of us.”
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who represents part of the Chicago region and is running for the U.S. Senate, also called for reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the forum.
Martinez’s testimony
Martinez is asking a federal judge to allow the release of evidence in her case in light of the federal government continuing to label her as a “domestic terrorist.”
“As a 30-year-old USA citizen with no criminal history, I believed that I had nothing to worry about, but I was concerned for my friends and neighbors,” Martinez testified, recalling the Saturday that she saw CBP agents in downtown Chicago. “For the next 15 to 20 minutes, I followed these border patrol agents through my neighborhood, honking my horn, shouting out, ‘La Migra,’ ” which in Spanish means immigration officers.
Martinez followed the agents for several blocks before the vehicles collided, resulting in minor dents and scrapes on both vehicles.
According to testimony and documents from Martinez’s now-dropped assault case, she stopped her vehicle directly after the collision and the agents’ SUV came to a halt just ahead of Martinez. She then accelerated away, testifying in court that she swerved left to avoid hitting the agents, who were exiting their vehicle.
That’s when the agents opened fire, ultimately striking Martinez five times in the arm, chest and both legs. Only one of the three agents had a body camera activated at the time.
While the body camera footage hasn’t been released publicly, lawyers for Martinez have said in court that it shows an officer shouting “do something b----.”
The agent who shot her allegedly said in a group text to friends: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.”
“The physical scars will always be there in the mornings and evenings, when I get dressed and I stare at my body, now permanently disfigured by the five lead bullets,” Martinez said. “They will be there this summer when I head to the beach with my dogs and family. They will be there when I get down on the floor with my students.
“Perhaps even worse, the mental scars will always be there as a reminder of the time my own government attempted to execute me, and when they failed, they chose to vilify me.”
Release of evidence
In late January, Martinez’s attorneys requested that U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis lift an order barring Martinez from sharing records like photos, videos and communications from the incident.
Several media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, also requested the release of the records but that motion was denied.
Federal prosecutors announced Tuesday they would not oppose the release of the body camera footage that depicts the crash, or interviews with the agents, but would oppose the release of text messages not already seen by the public, according to the Tribune.
Alexakis is expected to rule on that motion on Wednesday.
The order is standard in most trials to protect against public disclosure in a criminal case. But even though the charges have been dropped, Martinez’s lawyers say the information needs to become public because DHS continues to label Martinez as a “domestic terrorist.”
“I am asking you today, pleading with you to please help bring back the America I grew up loving,” Martinez said at Tuesday’s forum. “If there’s no justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government.”
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