A former Walmart employee who tried to intervene as Border Patrol agents arrested an undocumented custodial worker in Pico Rivera in June was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday.
Adrian Martinez, 20, was indicted by a Santa Ana jury on the charge of conspiracy to impede a federal officer tied to the events of June 17, which unfolded at the height of the Trump administration’s immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. Martinez’s violent arrest was caught on video and quickly went viral.
According to the three-page indictment, Martinez confronted Border Patrol agents as they tried to arrest the custodial worker in the parking lot of a shopping center and blocked the agents’ vehicle with his own. Prosecutors allege that he positioned himself with a growing crowd to surround the agents’ vehicle and prevent it from leaving the area.
Martinez then allegedly grabbed a large trash can and moved it in front of the agents’ vehicle, blocking them from being able to pass.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A., Martinez faces up to six years in prison if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in downtown L.A. on Thursday.
“Make no mistake: There are serious, life-altering consequences for impeding law enforcement,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a news release Wednesday.
Martinez’s lawyers released a statement noting that “just as in other cases arising out of recent illegal and inhumane ICE raids, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had to travel out of Los Angeles county to secure this indictment.”
The Times previously reported on Essayli’s struggles to secure indictments in protest cases.
“Although we are disappointed that Adrian’s case has not been dismissed, we always anticipated being required to litigate this case post-indictment,” the Miller Law Group, which represents Martinez, said in its statement.
The lawyers also criticized Essayli for posting on X, “before we had even officially been notified of the outcome of the indictment” and using it “to maliciously spread falsehoods and fearmonger at our client’s expense.”
In a June interview with The Times, Martinez said he was on break when he spotted the custodial worker, “getting grabbed very aggressively, getting manhandled,” by the agents. Martinez said he drove over, told the agents that their actions weren’t right and they should leave the worker alone.
Surveillance and spectator video captured at the scene and looped in social media feeds show an agent rushing Martinez and shoving him to the ground. Martinez gets back up, there is more shoving, and he exchanges angry words with a masked officer carrying a rifle. Then other agents swarmed him, pushed him back down and dragged him to their truck.
Agents ultimately arrested both the custodial worker and Martinez.
In the June interview, Martinez said after his arrest he was taken to a parking structure, where he was told he’d been arrested for assaulting a federal officer by striking an agent in the face and breaking his glasses. Martinez, who weighs around 150 pounds, said the agents arresting him pointed to the colleague he was being accused of attacking, who looked “like a grizzly bear.”
“I don’t even remember you,” Martinez recalled saying. “It just seemed like they were trying to get me to say like, ‘Yes, you assaulted him,’ but I knew I didn’t.”
The next day, Essayli posted a photo on X of Martinez, still in his blue Walmart vest. Martinez, he wrote, had been arrested “for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face.”
Martinez was charged in a June 19 criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch and neither does Wednesday’s indictment.
Bloomberg Law previously reported that Essayli had rejected office supervisors’ advice not to charge Martinez for assaulting a federal officer and that an FBI agent felt there was insufficient evidence and declined to sign a complaint attesting probable cause to a judge.
Within a day, the outlet reported, another agent signed off on the charge of conspiracy to impede.
In an interview a week after his arrest, Martinez wore a brace on his right leg, where he’d suffered a contusion, and said he’d been bruised and scratched all over his body.
Walmart later terminated Martinez, citing “gross misconduct,” according to a separation notice reviewed by The Times.
“I was just speaking up for a man,” Martinez said. “How can I go from that to this?
“People have the right to speak up for themselves and for someone else,” he added. “You don’t have to get treated like this, thrown on the floor and manhandled because of that.”
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