Judge Orders Video and Texts Unsealed in Case of Chicago Woman Shot 5 Times by Border Patrol

A federal judge in Chicago today ordered evidence unsealed in the case of Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen who was shot five times by a Customs and Border Protection officer last October.

U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois Georgia Alexakis ruled that Martinez had shown good cause for the release of text messages and body camera footage from the officer who shot her, while the government had shown “zero concern” for Martinez’s reputation.

Martinez’s attorneys have been pressing to unseal the evidence because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refuses to retract its previous statements calling Martinez a “domestic terrorist,” despite federal prosecutors dropping the charges against her. If the government won’t correct the record, they argued, Martinez should have the opportunity to do it herself.

Alexakis agreed. “Ms. Martinez is a United States citizen. She’s a resident of this district. And under our legal system, she is presumed innocent of any offense of which she has not been convicted,” the judge said at today’s hearing.

Border Patrol officer Charles Exum shot Martinez five times on October 4 after a traffic incident in Chicago. Martinez says she was following the officers in her car and blowing her horn to warn others of their presence before the CBP vehicle sideswiped her. In a press release issued the same day as the shooting, DHS claimed that agents were “boxed in by 10 cars” when Martinez’s vehicle “rammed” their car. Officers were forced to fire defensive shots, the government claimed, when “a suspect tried to run them over.” The statement also said Martinez had a history of doxxing federal agents and was armed with a “semi-automatic weapon.”

Martinez and a man in the car, Anthony Santos Ruiz, were charged with multiple counts of impeding and assaulting federal law enforcement officers with a deadly weapon.

However, Martinez’s attorneys say the sealed body camera footage shows Martinez never rammed them, officers were never boxed in or obstructed (there were only two cars, not 10), and she never threatened officers with her car. What the sealed footage does show, Martinez’s lawyers told the Chicago Sun-Times, is an agent saying, “Do something, bitch,” shortly before crashing into Martinez.

Some of Exum’s text messages regarding the shooting were released in November. In one, he sent a link to a news story about the shooting and wrote, “Read it. Five shots, seven holes. I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys.”

Later in November, federal prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges and exonerate Martinez and Ruiz.

Despite that, the DHS has continued to attack Martinez in public statements. Following the dismissal of the case against her, the department told Chicago news outlet ABC7 that, “Border Patrol law enforcement officers were ambushed by domestic terrorists.…Our law enforcement shows incredible restraint and prudence in their exercise of force.”

In a story published January 31, NPR asked the DHS if it had plans to delete or update its statements on Martinez. DHS responded: “Border Patrol law enforcement officers were ambushed by domestic terrorists that rammed federal agents with their vehicles. The woman, Marimar Martinez, driving one of the vehicles, was armed with a semi-automatic weapon and has a history of doxing federal agents.”

Martinez’s attorneys say she is a 30-year-old Montessori school teacher with a legal concealed carry license, and that the allegations of “doxxing” are false.

Martinez originally agreed to keep the materials in the case sealed, but she changed her mind after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minnesota. The DHS Office of Public Affairs has repeatedly issued false statements about incidents regarding use-of-force incidents by immigration officers, including in the recent fatal shootings of Good and Pretti.

“I am their voice,” Martinez said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, “I am here for a reason.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago agreed to the release of body camera footage but argued against unsealing more of Exum’s text messages. Lawyers for the U.S. government claimed in court filings that “the release of these messages after the charges against Ms. Martinez have been dismissed with prejudice will serve only to further sully Agent Exum, his family, and co-workers without any corresponding benefit to Ms. Martinez.”

In a court filing in response, Martinez’s attorneys said the irony of the government’s sudden concern about ruining someone’s reputation was “shocking.”

“Agent Exum sent these messages in the minutes, hours, and days after the shooting. These are his words,” the filing by Martinez’s attorneys said. “To the extent they would ‘sully’ his reputation more than his previously disclosed disgusting text messages already have, it is a fully deserved self-imposed sullying. Marimar Martinez had no say in being branded as a ‘domestic terrorist’ by her government. The Government drafted those words. The Government sent those words out to the world. Unlike Exum, she never had a say in the things being written about her, as opposed to Exum having had full say in the things he chose to write and disseminate.”

Alexakis denied Martinez’s request to also unseal automated license plate reader data collected by the government during its investigation of her.

Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D–Illinois) announced this week that Martinez would be his guest at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress later this month.

“Who knows? Maybe President Trump will even at that point retract the domestic terrorist label of her, which would be great and she would be there to see it,” Christopher Parente, Martinez’s attorney, told reporters outside a federal courthouse following the ruling.