Widespread fallout is possible from a lawsuit over the Border Patrol shooting of a Chicago woman, which names President Donald Trump’s role in the crackdown and accuses FBI Director Kash Patel of spreading lies about her.
Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen and Montessori school teaching aide with no criminal record, filed the suit Monday in federal court in Chicago, according to the complaint.
Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum shot her five times on Oct. 4, 2025, during Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago. She is seeking damages from the federal government.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump “repeatedly told the American public” that his crackdown would protect them from “dangerous undocumented criminals,” the lawsuit says.
When the Department of Homeland Security launched the Chicago operation in September 2025, it promised to target “the worst of the worst,” according to the complaint.
“The promise to target dangerous undocumented criminals supplied a pretext for treating skin color and perceived foreignness as grounds for suspicion and coercion,” the lawsuit argues.
Martinez had watched agents target her friends and neighbors “with brown skin, no criminal history” who were “working honest jobs,” her attorneys wrote.
On the morning of the shooting, she spotted three agents in an SUV and followed it through her neighborhood, honking her horn to warn residents and streaming on Facebook Live, the lawsuit says.
As she followed, an agent in the SUV was recorded on a body camera saying “do something b—!” while pointing a rifle at her car, according to the complaint.
“[I]t’s time to get aggressive and get the f— out,” the agents were then recorded saying.
About four seconds later, Exum swerved into her lane and struck her car, the lawsuit says.
Gun in hand, Exum yelled “all right, it’s on now f—!” before getting out of the SUV, the lawsuit alleges. Within two seconds, and without any warning, he fired five times into her car.
Five bullets struck her seven times, hitting both legs, her right forearm and her chest, according to the complaint. The last two shots came through her side and rear windows after she had already driven past him.
That same day, Exum and the two other agents told the FBI that Martinez hit their SUV first, that cars had blocked their path and that she drove at Exum, the lawsuit says.
Security video from nearby businesses shows nothing blocked the SUV, according to the complaint, and Exum later admitted in court that there “was no ramming.”
Hours after the shooting, DHS, which oversees the Border Patrol, called Martinez a “domestic terrorist” who was “armed with a semi-automatic weapon and has a history of doxxing federal agents,” the lawsuit says.
Martinez had a state license to carry a handgun, and it was holstered and buried in her purse when Exum fired, according to the complaint.
The next day, Patel posted that she had been “charged for assaulting federal officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon,” the lawsuit says. He also shared a video that another user claimed showed her ramming a DHS vehicle.
“[T]he video captured an entirely different event that did not involve Marimar or Agent Exum,” the complaint says.
Federal prosecutors charged Martinez with assaulting and impeding a federal officer and argued she was a “danger to the community,” the suit says. A judge rejected that claim and ordered her released.
Weeks later, prosecutors dropped the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, Chicago public television station WTTW reported.
Within hours of the shooting, and before any investigation had begun, Gregory Bovino, then the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large, emailed Exum offering to extend his career past retirement age, according to the complaint.
“In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” Bovino wrote.
Exum later texted colleagues that his supporters included Bovino, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and “El Jefe himself,” crediting Bovino for that account, the lawsuit says. The suit identifies “El Jefe,” Spanish for “the boss,” as “apparently” Trump.
Exum also boasted about the shooting in a group text with fellow agents called “Posse Chat,” according to the complaint.
“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” Exum wrote.
The chat’s name “evokes America’s shameful history of armed posses hunting and lynching racial minorities, often with the participation or protection of law enforcement,” the lawsuit says.
“You are a legend among agents,” a fellow Border Patrol agent texted Exum.
On Oct. 8, 2025, two days after a judge ordered the government to preserve evidence, Exum drove his SUV from an FBI garage in Chicago to his station in Calais, Maine, the lawsuit says.
There, he had the SUV “repaired” and ordered a mechanic to buff out the paint marks left by the crash, according to the complaint.
The Illinois Accountability Commission, which investigated Midway Blitz, concluded in April that Exum “shot an unarmed civilian without apparent justification,” the lawsuit says.
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