Kill, Lie, and Cover-Up: The Shooting of Ruben Martinez

Eleven months. That’s how long it took DHS to admit that one of its immigration agents killed Ruben Ray Martinez as he sat in his car on South Padre Island on the Gulf Coast of Texas. And even then, they lied about it, claiming that Martinez, a 23-year-old American citizen, had run over an immigration officer, hurling his body onto the hood of his car. A newly released video extracted by a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety shows that Martinez didn’t run over anyone. Like Renee Good, he was executed as he was trying to follow the conflicting orders given by Texas police and federal agents and then slandered as a potential cop killer.

Ruben’s mother, Rachel Reyes, learned of his death when a Texas Ranger knocked on her door in San Antonio. He told her that a few hours earlier, Ruben had been shot and killed after disobeying an order from a law enforcement officer. Two things struck Rachel. First, this didn’t sound like something her son would do. “Ruben was really nice and he didn’t have enemies or make enemies or get in fights, so I would never in my wildest dreams imagine that someone would want to hurt him,” Reyes told the Washington Post. Second, she found it strange that the Ranger didn’t say who shot Ruben. She assumed it was another Ranger.

A report on the incident by South Padre Island police noted  that Martinez had struck a law enforcement officer with his car, describing it as “aggravated assault against a public servant.” The public servant was named as Hector Sosa of Harlingen, Texas. But it didn’t identify the law enforcement agency Sosa worked for and even more strangely failed to mention the shooting of Ruben Martinez. It merely said: “case closed.” In other words, both the Texas Rangers and the South Padre Island police helped bury ICE’s involvement in the killing.

Then she read an article on a South Padre Island news site reporting that a man had been shot in the beach resort town in an “officer-involved shooting,” but that the shooter had been a member of a federal agency.

Rachel called the Ranger who had informed her of Ruben’s death. He was now part of the team investigating the shooting. The Ranger told her that Ruben had been killed by an immigration agent working with the Department of Homeland Security. But DHS made no mention of the shooting or that one of its agents was responsible and concealed its involvement for almost an entire year.

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On March 15, Ruben left his house around two in the afternoon and picked up his friend Joshua Ortega. Ruben had just turned 23. He and Ortega drove to South Padre Island to celebrate. South Padre is a party town, favored by college students and spring breakers.

After arriving in South Padre, Martinez and Ortega went to a pool party with friends, had a few drinks, got back in Ruben’s car and went to Whataburger. After eating their food, they drove down the main drag in town, where traffic was backed up from a traffic accident. A Texas Ranger who was directing traffic spotted an open liquor bottle in the backseat of the car and asked Ruben and Joshua about it. Satisfied with their answer, the Ranger waved them on.

It’s at this point that the versions of events begin to diverge, like a South Texas version of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. According to the DHS report on the shooting, ICE agents who were present at the accident scene for some unexplained reason ordered Martinez to get out of the car. Again, they don’t explain why, though one can presume they had racially profiled Martinez and Ortega. Instead of getting out of the car, the DHS report claims that Martinez ““accelerated forward, striking a HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.” Another agent then shot Martinez through the driver’s side window. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. The DHS report claims that “the special agent who was struck was taken to a hospital for treatment of a knee injury and was later released.”

Ruben’s mother, Renee, was told a different story by the Texas Ranger. According to the Ranger’s version of events, Martinez failed to stop his car after being ordered to by the immigration officer. The car “tapped” the agent and another immigration officer responded by shooting Reuben. The Ranger said that the officer who had been “tapped” by the car was “shaken up” but not wounded in the incident.

Joshua Ortega’s account of the killing of Ruben Martinez disputes both of these versions. Ortega and Martinez had been lifelong friends, dating back to kindergarten. He described Ruben as being like a brother to him. He described him as a kind, gentle and respectful person, who had never been violent or committed any crimes, except racking up a few traffic tickets. He said Ruben invited him to go to South Padre Island to meet some friends who owned a condo there. He said they had a few drinks at the condo and a pool party, then tried to get into a club, but weren’t allowed in, so they stopped at a fast-food joint and ordered a couple of burgers, which they ate in the parking lot. Then they headed back to the condo and soon encountered the line of cars on Padre Boulevard, backed up from the accident scene. As they were stopped in traffic, a local cop asked them about the open liquor bottle, then told them to “turn around and leave.” He didn’t cite them or give them a warning about the open container. As Ruben inched the car forward, another cop slapped the hood and tried to get in front of the car.

“[The second officer] wasn’t moving out of the way when we tried to turn around and leave as the police officer told us to do,” Ortega wrote in an affidavit about the shooting. “By that time, there were two or three of what appeared to be troopers and they started yelling at us to stop. I even saw them draw their guns. This was crazy to me because we were only crawling like the car was in gear, but just coasting. Ruben never hit the gas. The troopers were never in danger from Ruben and could have easily stepped aside while we tried to turn around and leave.”

As Ruben tried to turn the car around, the HSI agent came up to the driver’s side and, according to Ortega, “without giving any warning, commands, or opportunity to comply, the agent fired multiple shots at Ruben from an extremely close distance–no more than two feet away.” Ortega says he heard Ruben say, “I’m sorry.” Then his friend slumped backwards. Ruben had been shot in the chest, one of the bullets piercing his heart.

Ruben, who was already unconscious, was pulled from the car and tossed face down on the pavement. He was handcuffed. According to Ortega, 10 minutes went by before Ruben was provided any medical treatment. The young man never regained consciousness.

Ortega was held by the cops for six hours. He wasn’t charged, read his Miranda rights or told why he was being detained. He later wrote that “I felt that my continued detention may have been intended to influence or shape my account of what happened.”

Joshua Ortega was set to testify about the incident before a grand jury. His testimony would have contradicted DHS’s account of the killing. But he died before he could tell his story, killed in a “high-speed” crash, where his car was completely consumed in flames.

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A nurse and a Trump voter, Ruben’s mother, Rachel, wanted to trust the system. But as she was waiting for the Texas Rangers to complete their report on the shooting, a life insurance policy claim filed by Ruben’s employer (he’d worked for both Amazon and Walmart) was denied on the grounds that Ruben had been killed after assaulting a law enforcement officer.

Rachel wasn’t a political person. She tended to trust the government. She trusted Trump and she trusted the police. But something wasn’t right here. The Texas Rangers said no one had been injured in the incident, except for Ruben. So why was the insurance claim denied? Where was the insurance company getting the information that Ruben had intentionally run over and injured a law enforcement officer?

Then she noticed the same story repeating itself in other ICE shootings of people, including American citizens, inside their cars. In California, DC, and Chicago, DHS claimed their agents had shot people who tried to run them over. But witnesses’ testimony and videos didn’t back up DHS’s claims. Then came the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis, who was smeared by Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller as a “domestic terrorist.” Had the same thing happened to Ruben, the first American citizen shot and killed by Trump’s immigration agents (that we know of)? Could he have been murdered by a federal agent and the real story covered up?

The real facts about the cases didn’t start to emerge publicly until February 2026, after a lawsuit filed by American Oversight uncovered the original ICE report on the incident. Then last week, videos of the incident that had been withheld by the Texas Department of Public Safety were released, which flatly contradicts ICE’s narrative of the shooting. It doesn’t show Ruben intentionally running over Agent Sosa. It doesn’t show Sosa being tossed onto the roof of Ruben’s Ford. It doesn’t show Ruben accelerating. It doesn’t show anything DHS said happened.

What the sometimes blurry and shaky videos show is Martinez being stopped and questioned about the liquor bottle by a Texas cop (apparently a game warden), then waved on around the traffic accident. But Martinez, perhaps still a little unnerved about being questioned, mistakenly turns the wrong way. Cops can be heard yelling, “Stop! Where’s he going? Stop him!” Wherever Ruben thought he was going, he wasn’t going very fast and he soon stops again. Another officer stands near the front of the car and slaps the hood. Realizing his mistake, Martinez slowly turns the wheels to the left, as if to turn around, away from the cop/agent and the accident scene. Suddenly, three shots are fired. Cops rush the car and pull Martinez out. His limp body is pushed to the road face-first. His hands are cuffed behind his back. Ortega is also yanked from the car and placed in custody. After a couple of minutes, two cops turn Ruben over. He is bleeding copiously from the chest. More time passes. Paramedics arrive and perform CPR. But it’s too late. Ruben is gone.

At no time was any cop in danger of being run over. And with more than a dozen cops from various agencies on the scene, there was no chance of Martinez fleeing if they’d wanted to arrest him for “tapping” a cop with his car. There was no reason to shoot Ruben Martinez. But cops don’t need a reason; the excuse of “fear” will suffice. Especially for immigration cops. They enjoy almost complete impunity for whatever they do, even killing an American kid, an American mom or an American nurse.

You can see why DHS was eager to conceal its involvement in the killing of Ruben Martinez. News of ICE shooting an unarmed American citizen for no good reason, who was merely out celebrating his birthday with a friend, only a month after Trump’s inauguration, may have revolted the public against ICE’s brutal and indiscriminate tactics before they really kicked into gear.

As far as we know, Ruben Martinez was the first American citizen to be shot by ICE as part of Trump’s immigration purge. But he wasn’t the last.

In fact, Ruben’s tragic killing set the template for how DHS would concoct a response to other specious shootings by its agents. The shooting of Martinez closely resembles the circumstances of a shooting in Washington, DC last October. Philip Brown, who is black, was pulled over in what had all the hallmarks of a racial profiling stop by DC police, who were partnering with ICE during the Trump-ordered siege of the nation’s capital. Brown’s car was idling at a stoplight when police said he tried to drive off, prompting a federal immigration agent from HSI to fire several shots. One of the bullets whizzed by Brown’s head and lodged into the passenger seat. The HSI agent said he feared for his life. The police report on the stop, which charged Brown with fleeing police, failed to mention the shots fired by the federal immigration officer. Charges against Brown were dropped. Federal prosecutors refused to charge the HSI agent, saying they couldn’t because Brown wasn’t injured by the bullets, though Brown would have certainly been charged if he had fired a gun at the cops and missed.

Less than a month later, a similar incident occurred on the very same DC street (Benning Road) when DC police attempted to pull over Justin Nelson, who is also black. Perhaps fearing what had happened to Philip Brown, Nelson refused to stop. A police chase ensued, which ended when Nelson’s car clipped a police cruiser. After the crash, another federal agent fired shots at Nelson, again missing. The agent claimed that Nelson had intentionally rammed into the police car and she “feared for her life.” But no charges were filed against Nelson, which undercut the federal officer’s claim that Nelson was trying to kill her.

Over the last 14 months, ICE has shot at more than 16 people, hitting 12, including five US citizens. Four people have been killed, three of them US citizens: Ruben Martinez, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Each of them was falsely blamed for their own deaths. Each of them was falsely accused of trying to kill federal agents. None of them had committed a crime when they were killed, yet each of them was slandered in death by their own government. Apparently, it’s not enough to enjoy the power to kill anyone you want with impunity. You must also lie and claim they made you do it.

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