Lawyers For Chicago Woman Shot By Border Patrol Threaten Civil Rights Lawsuit Over Evidence They Say Shows DHS Lied About Shooting
In October of last year, Marimar Martinez, a teaching assistant and U.S. citizen from Chicago, was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent, and before the ink was even dry on the headlines reporting the story, the Department of Homeland Security was already dragging her name through the mud, claiming she was armed when the gun she has a license to carry never left her purse, and that she weaponized her vehicle against the agent, when she did not.
Yes, all of this should sound eerily familiar to other recent stories regarding the victims of violent, trigger-happy federal agents and the federal government that lies and throws citizens under the bus to protect them — except Martinez, thankfully, survived to tell her side of the story.
On Wednesday, attorneys representing Martinez said newly released evidence demonstrates how Trump administration officials “have created a culture of violence among their agents” where the shootings of U.S. citizens are “embraced, celebrated and promoted,” citing investigative materials made public Tuesday, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Those materials reportedly show that after Martinez was shot by Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum, the immigration officer joked about it in a text chat with colleagues, was called a “legend” by one of his fellow agents, and even received praise directly from Border Patrol Greg Bovino, who was relieved from his duties in the Twin Cities last month, after he oversaw the perpetually violent, chaotic, human rights-violating mess that was the operation in Minnesota, and after he joined the government’s demonstrably false smear campaign against ICE victim Alex Pretti. Bovino was also constantly being reprimanded by federal judges in Illinois over his agents’ use of tear gas near schools and residential areas, as well as other uses of force. In fact, Bovino and his subordinates made a habit of violating a judge’s order limiting their use, which required him to appear before the court every week to present a progress report, even though another court blocked the order after the Trump administration fought it.
So, yeah — none of this is terribly surprising.
From the Tribune:
“As Marimar was fighting for her life, Greg Bovino was promoting the agent without any investigation being done into the shooting,” Martínez’s lead attorney, Christopher Parente, said in a statement Wednesday ahead of a news conference at a downtown law office.
Parente said the evidence shed light on the actions of Bovino’s agents in later operations in Minneapolis, where residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in incidents eerily similar to Martínez’s.
“This is why after agents shot Renee Good in cold blood on the streets of Minneapolis they did not attempt to perform CPR,” Parente said. “They were all checking their phones to see what reward commander Bovino was going to give them for successfully killing another protestor.”
Martínez’s attorneys called the news conference to review what they say were a series of lies perpetrated by Homeland Security officials about Martinez’s shooting, beginning within hours of the incident with the branding of Martínez, a Montessori school teacher with no criminal record, as an armed “domestic terrorist” who was part of a convoy attempting to box agents in that day.
With Martínez seated at a conference table with them, Parente and his co-counsel, Damon Cheronis and Michael Gallagher, also said they would be filing a federal tort claim Wednesday against the Department of Justice, which is a precursor to a federal lawsuit.
Unless the Justice Department takes action, in six months Martínez’s attorneys will file a federal civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging excessive force by Exum as well as a pattern of misstatements by his superiors intended to smear Martínez’s character and cover up the truth, Gallagher said.
Gallagher said they would be asking for “tens of millions of dollars” in damages in the suit, and that they’d press for a quick bench trial later this year.
A criminal case against Martinez, who had been charged with felony assault of a federal officer, was dismissed last November, a couple of weeks after a judge grilled Border Patrol personnel, including Exum, over a myriad of “discrepancies” in their account of how the shooting started, and over Exum being allowed to continue driving his damaged vehicle and have it cleaned when it was still to be used as evidence in the case, which also revealed that Exum had boasted about his marksmanship in a text thread with his fellow agents right after the shooting. That same month, a different judge released numerous videos that indicated federal agents and their DHS handlers were flat-out lying about agents being attacked by protesters in Chicago, and were actually the ones initiating and escalating the violent clashes.
Not that we needed more evidence that the federal government, under President Donald Trump, has routinely relied on propaganda and public smear campaigns to back its authoritarian policies and practices, especially as they relate to Trump’s mass deportation agenda — but damned if that evidence doesn’t just keep piling up anyway.
There’s a reason why the people keep resisting and will continue to do so everywhere ICE and Border Patrol are deployed.
SEE ALSO:
Judge Dismisses Charges Against Chicago Woman Shot By Border Patrol
Judge Blasts Border Patrol Over Chicago Case ‘Discrepancies’