Three months into President Donald Trump’s mass deportation undertaking, an ICE officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in South Padre Island, long before immigration agents killed another American in Minnesota that prompted outrage across the nation, according to records released this week that were not previously disclosed by the government.
Agents assigned to a Department of Homeland Security subagency fatally shot 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez of San Antonio multiple times in the early hours of March 15 while they helped local police direct traffic at the scene of a car crash, records released by American Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog, show.
In a statement Friday, DHS confirmed the shooting and accused Martinez of “intentionally” running over an agent, who was taken to a hospital for a knee injury and later released, according to records of the incident.
Local media had reported on the shooting but it was not clear until this week that federal immigration officers were involved. At least half a dozen other people have died during the nations’ immigration crackdown under the Trump administration.
American Oversight released a trove of records on Tuesday related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of force, training and oversight after suing for the documents. The records also detail another non-fatal and previously unreported incident that occurred in Beaumont a month before Martinez’s shooting.
“Since Ruben’s death a year ago, all we have wanted is justice for him and we have struggled with the silence surrounding his killing,” his mother, Rachel Reyes, said in a statement. “Now, the country is in crisis — and, terribly, heartbreakingly, other families are enduring what we have. It’s my hope that attention being raised now into Ruben’s death will help bring the justice we want for him and the answers we haven’t had.”
The DHS incident report chronicles a chaotic scene that resulted in death. DHS agents wrote in the report that Martinez failed to follow traffic instructions, so they surrounded his car. When he accelerated, according to the report, Martinez allegedly struck an agent who ended up on the hood — which prompted another agent to unload an unspecified number of rounds through the driver’s side window.
“The vehicle came to a stop and both driver and passenger were immediately secured,” the report states. Federal agents took Martinez to a hospital in Brownsville, where he later died.
The Texas Department of Public Safety’s Rangers are investigating the shooting. A DPS spokesperson said the agency is not going to comment on the incident since it’s an active investigation.
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In Texas, Democratic leaders have been raising alarms about the clampdown across the country and the state’s involvement, thanks in part to Republican state leadership that is politically aligned with the Trump administration.
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin said Friday night that she had requested a legislative oversight inquiry to release the body cam footage of Martinez’s shooting. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro called for a thorough probe into the shooting, “including why there was an 8-month cover up.”
San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones also weighed in, calling for a congressional investigation into the shooting.
“In normal times, I would call upon the appropriate departments to investigate this matter,” she said in a news release on Saturday. “However, we’re not in normal times, and it’s unclear any department-led investigations would be fairly executed, as evident by the delay in getting answers at this point.”
The fact that the feds couldn’t be bothered to say anything at all about this for months, until they were forced to acknowledge it, sure says a lot. Nothing they’re saying about it now can be trusted, which is totally consistent with how they’ve been behaving. A Congressional investigation is the appropriate response, but not until we have a real Congress. And when we do, and God help us when we have a real President, there needs to be so many investigations, followed by as many criminal charges as are warranted. We cannot make the same “turn the page” mistake we made last time. There needs to be real accountability, from the ICE thugs up to and very much including the people at the top who made the decisions, and the fat cats outside the administration who are bribing and grifting their way to even more wealth. Treat them all like Vichy collaborators, or we’ll be right back where we are now the next time Democrats lose a national election.