A federal judge in Chicago will allow the release of evidence, including body camera video footage and text messages, from the October shooting of Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old teacher’s assistant, by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago.
On Friday, Judge Georgia N. Alexakis of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said she would allow the release of text messages from Charles Exum, the agent who shot Ms. Martinez, and video of the incident, as soon as the materials were redacted to obscure the identities of other parties. That could happen as soon as Monday, Ms. Martinez’s attorney said.
The evidence was gathered as part of the now-defunct criminal case against Ms. Martinez and had been sealed by a judicial protective order.
In its filings, the government has argued that releasing the text messages “will serve only to further sully Agent Exum, his family and co-workers.”
Ms. Martinez’s attorney, Christopher V. Parente, responded that it would be “a fully deserved self-imposed sullying,” following a “campaign of lies” against Ms. Martinez by the Department of Homeland Security. After the hearing on Friday, he praised the judge’s ruling. “You can’t call a U.S. citizen with no criminal history who’s a Montessori schoolteacher a domestic terrorist,” he said.
Ruling from the bench, Judge Alexakis said Ms. Martinez had “demonstrated good cause to warrant the release of the text messages,” because they “will counter the government’s public narrative of her and her actions.”
Friday’s court proceeding is the latest chapter in a saga that began on Oct. 4, when Ms. Martinez was driving one of two vehicles that were honking as they trailed an S.U.V. carrying federal agents and shouting, “La migra,” the Spanish term for immigration authorities. The Trump administration would later characterize these actions as “domestic terrorism.” Ms. Martinez’s attorney has compared her to Paul Revere, warning neighbors about the presence of Homeland Security officers.
Ms. Martinez’s vehicle collided with the S.U.V. on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Moments later, Mr. Exum, a Border Patrol agent, shot her five times while she was still in her car. Text messages from Mr. Exum appear to show him bragging about the shooting. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes,” he wrote. “Put that in your book boys.”
Once released, the evidence could shed light on competing claims about the moments leading up to the shooting. A Customs and Border Protection incident report claims that Mr. Exum fired “to defend himself and his fellow agents” after Ms. Martinez “accelerated forward in an attempt to run over agents on foot.” In court filings, Mr. Parente claimed Mr. Exum opened fire “within two seconds” of exiting his vehicle.
Prosecutors charged Ms. Martinez with assaulting federal officers, but after Ms. Martinez’s legal team raised concerns about the preservation of evidence — the S.U.V. had been moved hundreds of miles away — they dropped the case.
The Homeland Security Department’s initial claims about the collision and the shooting are among many assertions by administration officials about protesters’ behavior that have been unable to withstand judicial scrutiny. A Chicago jury acquitted a man who had been accused of putting a bounty on the head of Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol commander who led sweeping raids in Chicago and then Minneapolis. In another case, Judge Sara L. Ellis found that Mr. Bovino had repeatedly lied about the tactics his forces had used against protesters.
Earlier this week, Ms. Martinez testified before Democrats in Congress. “I grew up revering law enforcement,” she said. Seeing what Immigration and Customs Enforcement “was doing in our community at this time changed my view.”
Ms. Martinez, a U.S. citizen, is one of 10 people who have been shot by federal agents since the Trump administration began ramping up its arrest and deportation efforts in September. Her shooting came weeks before the Trump administration shifted its immigration enforcement effort from Chicago to Minneapolis, where two protesters have been killed by federal agents.
The case of one of those protesters, Renee Good, has echoes of Ms. Martinez’s. Government officials accused Ms. Good, who was driving, of weaponizing her vehicle against the Border Patrol agent who shot her. Mr. Trump’s claim that “she ran him over” has been disputed by state and local officials, and challenged by a New York Times analysis of cellphone video. As with Ms. Martinez, the administration quickly branded Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist” before a thorough investigation, and despite an apparent gap with the legal definition of that term.
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, has said that both Ms. Good and Alex Pretti, the other protester shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, were engaged in “domestic terrorism.” “We were using the best information we had at the time,” she later said on Fox News regarding Mr. Pretti. The Department of Homeland Security did not directly respond when asked if Ms. Noem stood by her initial characterization. Instead, a spokesman responded with a statement criticizing “attempts to dox our law enforcement officers” and “the malicious rhetoric of sanctuary politicians.”
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