When Marimar Martinez noticed a carload of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents driving through Chicago last fall at the height of “Operation Midway Blitz,” she thought she had little to fear from following them.
While testifying at a public forum on the actions of immigration agents in Washington on Tuesday, Martinez, 30 and a U.S. citizen from a family of Mexican immigrants, recalled how as she turned onto South Kedzie Avenue in Brighton Park, the federal vehicle she’d been tailing swerved into the side of her car. She froze and slammed her brakes. The agent who had been driving got out of his car.
“It seemed like time stopped,” she said.
What happened next has been detailed in reams of court hearings, interviews and news stories: Agent Charles Exum fired five shots, striking Martinez in the arms, legs and chest. Then he bragged about it in a group text to other agents: “I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys.”
Martinez was initially charged with “ramming” and assaulting a federal agent, but the government dropped the case against her and a co-defendant, Anthony Ruiz, just 15 days after Exum’s admissions.
Martinez’s testimony at Tuesday’s meeting, not a full-blown congressional hearing but a forum organized in response to recent fatal violence against U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, comes after weeks of blowback against the immigration enforcement raids that have rattled cities like Chicago.
That blowback triggered a brief, partial government shutdown that ended Tuesday as Capitol Hill girds itself for longer fight over funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which Democrats have pledged to oppose until officials put more restrictions on immigration enforcement operations.
Martinez on Tuesday echoed those demands to curb the raids and said she was doing so in part because she saw herself as a voice for others who did not survive their encounters with federal agents — Good’s brothers and Chicago attorney Antonio Romanucci, who is representing the Good family, spoke to the forum moments before she did.
“I am Renee Good, I am Alex Pretti, I am Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, I am Keith Porter,” she said. “This needs to stop now. How many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?”
Martinez herself has been left with last injuries, she said, unable to close her right hand around a pen.
She described for the panel how she had been on her way to drop off a bag of clothes and shoes at a nearby church on Oct. 4, 2025 when she saw the vehicle with only an out-of-state plate on the back bumper.
She drove after it, she said, honking and shouting to warn others that immigration agents were nearby. She remembered thinking of Villegas Gonzalez, who had been killed weeks earlier in Franklin Park, as the agents confronted her after the crash on the 3900 block of S. Kedzie Ave.
When she first registered pain that day, Martinez said, she thought she’d been shot with the pepper balls she was seeing all over the news. She recounted the sound her back windowshield made as it shattered and how she began to feel lightheaded as she drove away from the scene.
“I looked down and noticed blood gushing out of my arms and legs,” she said.
She drove a mile north up Kedzie and called 911. Call audio obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request captures her asking, “can I get medical attention on 35th and California? I’ve just been shot.”
“We’ll send someone right over for you,” the dispatcher said. “Where on your body are you shot?”
“On my arm and on my leg,” Martinez said. “I can’t feel my arm no more.”
The fire department dispatcher reassured her that help was on the way.
The first dispatcher rejoined the call and asked Martinez if she knew who shot her, but had to repeat the question several times. Martinez can be heard speaking in Spanish. Other muted voices were audible in the background.
“Hello?” the dispatcher asks again. “Ma’am, do you know who shot you?”
“ICE AGENTS SHOT ME!”
“Who?”
“ICE AGENTS!”
“The ICE agent shot you?”
“YES!”
“OK, in the arm and the leg,” the dispatcher responded. “What’s your name, hon? They’ve got the fire department heading on over there. Where are you inside? Ma’am, are you inside a place or a business or what?”
The background voices speaking Spanish grew more rapid and urgent.
“Is somebody helping you?,” the dispatcher asked. “(Are) the ICE agents still out there?”
Martinez’s voice, when she responded, was slower and quieter.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I ran from them.”
Martinez testified Tuesday that the last thing she remembered was an EMT putting her on a stretcher. Then she woke up in a hospital surrounded by federal agents, who took her into custody in a wheelchair and had to bring her to a second hospital when she bled through her bandages.
She described the next six weeks between her initial charges and the moment when prosecutors dropped her case as terrifying and surreal as she continued to work and teach her students while trying to recover from her wounds. She said she felt sick as she watched Exum testify about why he’d driven his vehicle back to Maine, altering evidence from the crash, and later as she heard his bragging text messages.
“My attempted executioner was Charles Exum,” she said. “I hope the government does not consider my use of his name here to be doxxing.”
Exum, a 23-year veteran of Border Patrol, testified at a pretrial hearing last year in the criminal case against Martinez that after the shooting, as news of the incident was making national headlines, he texted a group of other agents that he was “up for another round of “(expletive) around and find out.”
In his court testimony Nov. 5, Exum, who is based in Maine, described the circle of fellow agents he chatted with as a sort of support group for “relieving stress.”
And what did you mean by ‘Read it. 5 shots?’” asked Parente. “Why are you pointing that fact out?”
“I’m a firearms instructor,” Exum answered. “And I take pride in my shooting skills.”
“You take pride in your shooting skills?” Parente clarified.
“That is correct,” Exum said.
Martinez’s attorneys argued it was Exum who sideswiped Martinez and that his extreme use of force was completely unjustified. They also alleged evidence tampering, saying Exum was inexplicably allowed to drive the Tahoe more than 1,000 miles back to his home base in Maine, where a Border Patrol mechanic attempted to “wipe off” some of the scuff marks from the crash.
It’s since been revealed in court that Martinez’s car is part of a second, ongoing criminal investigation into the shooting, which is being handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in South Bend, Indiana.
Exum’s body-worn camera footage showing the traffic crash has not yet been made public, but federal prosecutors said Tuesday they’re no longer seeking to block its release.
Lawyers for Martinez, who was initially charged with assault, have argued for the video and other evidence in the case should be made available for public scrutiny, particularly after the controversial fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. Martinez is scheduled to give testimony at a forum on the actions of immigration agents in Washington on Tuesday.
And while Martinez said Tuesday in Washington that she “knew that no press release or tweet could ever trump the power of the truth,” her attorney Parente has pointed out that the government “continues to prosecute her character in the court of public opinion,” with labels of “domestic terrorist” and other falsehoods still visible on official government websites and social media, despite all charges being dropped against his client in November.
Martinez said Tuesday at the hearing that her main ask of the federal government at this point is for federal officials to take back their words.
“Sorry, you’re not a domestic terrorist, that’s it,” she said. ”That’s all I’m asking for. A simple sorry. That’s it.”
In a response filed just after midnight, prosecutors said they will not oppose the request to lift the protective order on the body cam video, which depicts the moments leading up to the Oct. 4 crash but does not show the shooting itself.
They also agreed to the release of other evidence including interviews of Exum, his two partners that day, as well as FBI photographs and reports, Martinez’s 911 call, and FBI reports regarding Martinez’s “custody and medical treatment,” the motion stated.
The U.S. attorney’s office will oppose, however, the release of any text messages Exum sent to co-workers and his wife after the shooting that have not already been made public in previous court hearings, saying they have “no bearing” on Martinez’s efforts to clear her name.
“Indeed, 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 based on the stated reasons in her motion,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Aaron Bond and Ronald DeWald argued.
U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis is set to rule on the release of the materials on Friday.
Alexakis shot down a similar request by the Tribune and other media outlets last month, citing what she said was an eleventh-hour attempt to intervene in the case and a lack of standing. Attorneys for the media have since appealed that ruling.
At a hearing last week, however, the judge took the U.S. attorney’s office to task over the federal government’s failure to remove statements on its official web sites and social media branding Martinez as a terrorist with a long history of doxing immigration agents.
“I’m hard-pressed to credit the idea that (the Department of Homeland Security) couldn’t change the narrative around this incident if they set their mind to it,” Alexakis said. “And as far as what I’ve been presented with as well, it’s not just DHS, it’s the FBI director who is also participating in this ongoing narrative.”
Alexakis also noted the government’s failure to correct the record has even seeped into decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, where a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito used the Martinez incident as an example of the purported dangers faced by immigration agents trying to enforce the laws.
“Did they tell the Supreme Court that in their filings in the Illinois National Guard case?” Alexakis asked DeWald at the hearing last week. “Did they ask the Supreme Court to correct its opinion when Justice Alito represented these facts as found as determined? Did the government do that?”
“I don’t believe so, your honor,” DeWald replied.
“Okay. And yet you still think that there is good cause here for the government to maintain a blanket protective order?” Alexakis said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
ckubzansky@chicagotribune.com
