Marimar Martinez, shot by Border Patrol in Chicago, speaks out after Good, Pretti deaths: 'I am their voice'

Marimar Martinez began to realize she’d been shot by a Border Patrol agent last fall when she lost control of her right hand.

Driving away from a collision with three agents at 39th and Kedzie, Martinez felt her fingers go stiff. Her body began to feel warm, and she felt light-headed. She touched her side, looked down and realized her hand was full of blood.

The Chicago native had been shot five times. She needed a plan.

Martinez, 30, thought about driving to a hospital, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. The blood covering her phone made it impossible to dial 911. Eventually she used Siri, the voice assistant, to call for help through her car’s Bluetooth speaker.

She spotted a repair shop near 35th and California. Martinez pulled over, ran inside and found help just as consciousness began to slip away. Someone inside the repair shop helped her to a chair and held onto her. She remembers looking out a door.

“I just saw the light getting brighter and brighter,” Martinez said. “In my head, I was like, ‘I’m losing this battle.’ I wasn't scared. … I don't know how to explain it. But I wasn’t in pain.”

Still, she thought, “This is it. I’m done.”

“I just closed my eyes,” she said. “I could have really died.”

But she didn’t. Martinez survived. And in a wide-ranging interview this week with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, Martinez discussed her shooting, the federal government’s failed attempt to prosecute her and the role she now sees for herself in a fight for accountability.

Martinez is set to testify in Washington, D.C., in a public forum Tuesday about immigration agents’ use of force. She’s also expected to learn this week whether a judge will allow her to release evidence tied to her dropped prosecution, including an agent’s body-camera footage.

Evidence suggests at least one shot fired at Martinez came from behind, her attorney says.

This all comes four months after the federal government splashed her photo online and labeled her a “domestic terrorist.” The government has yet to rescind the claim, two months after Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros dropped the charges against her.

A Homeland Security spokesperson said Monday that it “stands by our press releases and statements. The facts of what happened did not change.”

Martinez spoke with the Sun-Times and WBEZ about fear within immigrant families, and her refusal to give in to it. She discussed Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, two fellow U.S. citizens fatally shot by immigration authorities last month in Minneapolis.

In an echo of Martinez’s shooting, federal authorities applied the “domestic terrorist” label to each of them after their deaths.

But Martinez said she realizes she’s been given an opportunity that wasn’t afforded to them.

“Living.”

Good and Pretti no longer have a voice, she said. But Martinez does. And she plans to use it.

“I am their voice,” Martinez said, “I am here for a reason.”

‘I love my city’

The four stars of the Chicago flag are tattooed on Martinez’s right arm.

“I was raised and born in Chicago,” she said, “and I love my city.”

A South Sider, who grew up in Little Village, she’s now a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school. She said she hails from a big family, half of which is in Mexico. They throw big parties. Most weekends, she enjoys spending time with her siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles.

But Martinez also loves nature, fitness and horseback riding with her boyfriend. She said she likes to push her limits, including by climbing the stairs in the Swallow Cliff Woods forest preserve.

The only physical limitation she identified that’s tied to the shooting is in her right hand. She has nerve damage and still can’t bend some of her fingers. And that makes it difficult for her to tie her shoes, brush her hair or even open a bag of chips for the students at her school.

Martinez said she refuses to act like it’s ruined her life.

“If I can’t do it with my right, I’m going to do it with my left,” she said. “I’m going to pull through this.”

The day of her shooting, Martinez said she was on her way to donate clothes at a church. That’s because giving back to her community is important to Martinez, as well, she says. By then, the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz had been underway for about a month.

One day earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had made an unannounced visit to ICE's detention facility in Broadview. A masked federal agent had also deployed canisters of chemical irritants on the Northwest Side.

Then, on Oct. 4, Martinez crossed paths with a Chevrolet Tahoe driven by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum and carrying two additional agents. She said she felt like federal agents were preying on her people.

“You just grow tired of living in fear,” she said. “And, you know, I saw my opportunity.”

Martinez began to follow the Tahoe in her Nissan Rogue and continued for at least 20 minutes. She honked her horn. She yelled “la migra” and warned a landscaping crew to avoid the agents. Some people went indoors. Others sounded car alarms, helping raise the alert.

She believes she saved someone — “a dad, a son, an uncle,” perhaps — from the agents.

But the dynamic changed when she pulled alongside Exum’s Tahoe near 39th and Kedzie. She said that’s when Exum began swerving the Tahoe toward her Rogue.

“He could see me, I could see him, and then that’s it,” Martinez said.

“That’s when I felt the impact.”

Homeland Security told the public Martinez and another man “rammed” federal agents with their vehicles that day. But Martinez said the collision “was just like a side-swipe.” Even Exum, who later testified in court, acknowledged his car was swiped, not rammed.

“I never came into his lane,” Martinez told the Sun-Times and WBEZ.

Prosecutors said a GMC Envoy driven by the other man, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, hit Exum’s Tahoe in the right rear shortly after the Tahoe collided with Martinez’s Rogue. Ruiz’s attorneys did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Federal authorities said a “convoy of civilian vehicles” followed the agents, but no one else was ever charged. Homeland Security also accused Martinez of being “armed with a semi-automatic weapon.” But her firearm was at the bottom of her purse, inside a snapped-closed bright-pink holster, court records show.

Martinez had a valid concealed-carry license for the gun, and she never faced any charges related to the firearm.

Regardless, the collision had Martinez’s adrenaline pumping. She said she heard her heart beating. She had flashbacks to the death of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, the man shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in Franklin Park three weeks earlier.

Martinez stopped her Rogue. Exum stopped the Tahoe a car length or two ahead of her.

Martinez decided that, if the agents were going to arrest her, it wouldn’t be there.

‘Not going to break me’

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross opened fire on Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, video showed that he did so after her Honda Pilot began to move forward. Federal authorities said she “weaponized her vehicle.”

Back in October on the Southwest Side of Chicago, Martinez had stopped her Nissan Rogue after colliding with the Tahoe driven by Exum. Martinez feared she would be “manhandled” by agents if she stuck around.

So she hit the gas.

Later, federal prosecutors said she drove toward Exum.

But Martinez said she veered to her “farthest left” to avoid Exum and his Tahoe on her right. As she passed, she said she realized the agents were climbing out of the vehicle.

“That’s when I see their guns,” Martinez said. “And then, that’s when I got close to the steering wheel.”

She said she “shrugged,” scrunching her body against the wheel. She heard shots fired. But she hoped the agents had been using pepper balls, as they did against the Rev. David Black outside ICE’s Broadview facility weeks earlier.

Martinez’s right hand soon “folded,” she said, as she lost control of her fingers. She still thought a pepper ball might have hit her. But as the minutes passed, she realized blood was gushing out of her body.

During the 911 call she placed, a dispatcher asked where she’d been shot.

“On my arm and on my leg,” Martinez replied. “Ow. I can’t feel my arm no more.”

When she pulled up to the repair shop, she saw a man outside. She called out for help — and asked if he had a bandana.

Why a bandana?

Over the years, Martinez and her father “watched a lot of western movies,” she explained. And “every time a cowboy got shot,” he’d reach for a bandana to dress the wound.

Martinez suffered one gunshot wound to her lower left leg, two to her upper right thigh, one to her right breast and one to her right forearm, according to her defense attorney, Christopher Parente.

There’s no known video of the shooting. Of the three agents, only one had a body-worn camera activated at the time, records show. Exum did not. Still, photos suggest one bullet traveled through Martinez’s driver’s seat from back-to-front, Parente told a judge last week.

“It’s impossible to shoot someone from behind if they’re driving at you,” he said.

Medics eventually arrived and took Martinez to Mount Sinai Hospital. During her roughly three-hour stay, she said she had to ask an ICE agent to leave her room. And, in a sign of things to come, Martinez said a member of the medical staff told her, “you should have never rammed him.”

Martinez said she wondered, “Is this how I’m going to get treated?”

From there, she said, she was taken to an FBI facility and eventually to Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. She said she spent one night in jail.

During a detention hearing Oct. 6, Parente offered the judge more than 30 letters of support. They weren’t just from Martinez’s colleagues, but from parents of the children she’d taught. 

Parente said in court they “described her as kind, dependable, honest” and “empathetic.” He said they were gathered in nine hours.

The judge ordered Martinez’s release.

Criminal charges still hung over her head for 46 days. Eventually, Parente revealed text messages in court in which Exum seemed to brag about shooting Martinez.

The agent allegedly wrote, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

Martinez and Exum wound up crossing paths once again, in a courtroom, when Parente questioned Exum about those messages.

Martinez said she was “disgusted” by what Exum wrote.

“But that’s not going to break me,” she said.

‘I am here for a reason’

Federal prosecutors abruptly dropped the charges against Martinez and Ruiz on Nov. 20. By then, Parente had raised questions about Exum’s decision to drive his Tahoe back to Maine before the defense team could examine it.

U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis had also ordered prosecutors to produce additional text messages, apparently from Exum, to the defense.

Boutros’ spokesman said at the time that his office is “constantly evaluating new facts” to help “ensure that the interests of justice are served in each and every case.”

Parente said he was disappointed about the lack of investigation on the front end. He praised Boutros for having “the courage to do the right thing” when prosecutors realized they couldn’t prove their case, though.

As for Martinez, she said the first thing she did was call her mother, who struggled throughout the prosecution.

“It was like a weight taken off,” Martinez said. “And I was just relieved. Because she could be in peace. And if she’s in peace, I’m in peace.”

Still, Martinez said she and her attorney had acknowledged a disturbing truth to each other: “If it happened to me, it was going to happen to somebody else, eventually.”

That day came Jan. 7, when ICE officer Ross opened fire on Good in Minneapolis.

“I was just heartbroken,” Martinez said. “I did cry a little bit. Because I was like, damn, I was in her shoes.”

Then, on Jan. 24, Border Patrol officers shot Pretti.

“That was not justified,” Martinez said. “What happened to him, he got executed. And it’s going to keep happening and happening until there’s change.”

Two days later, Parente asked Alexakis to modify a court order so that Martinez would be allowed to share evidence from her case.

That order, known as a “protective order” is routine and designed to protect against the improper public disclosure of evidence in a criminal case. But Parente says it’s become like an “albatross” around Martinez’s neck, keeping the country in the dark about what happened.

Martinez said the evidence could be used to help hold immigration agents accountable for their actions. But Parente also says there’s another reason she should be allowed to share it.

The Homeland Security website still refers to Martinez as a “domestic terrorist.” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin used the phrase again in a statement to the news program “60 Minutes” about Martinez’s case last month.

It’s the same label federal authorities applied to Good and Pretti. But Martinez lived. And the federal charges that followed were ultimately dropped.

So Alexakis had harsh words last week for the feds’ failure to “change the narrative.”

“We’re finding ourselves in an unusual situation in which the government made exceedingly public statements about a criminal defendant, who under our American system of justice is presumed innocent, and have made no efforts to equally publicize the fact that they abandoned the opportunity to convict her — to try to convict her — in a court of law, even though that’s completely within their power to do that,” Alexakis said.

The judge told prosecutors to “think long and hard” about what she said as they penned a response to Martinez’s request.

She’s expected to rule Wednesday.

In the meantime, Martinez believes her life is a “testimony” to what’s occurring on the ground amid the feds’ immigration campaign. She said she doesn’t want anyone else to live through what she experienced.

“I am here for a reason, right?” she said. “I survived getting shot five times. Seven holes in my body.”

“Imagine [if] I would have died,” she said. “What the government would have said.”