Marimar Martinez, shot 5 times by Border Patrol in Chicago, plans to attend Trump’s State of the Union
Four months ago, Marimar Martinez sat wounded in a federal courtroom facing criminal charges for allegedly having assaulted the Border Patrol agent who then shot her five times.
Now, cleared of all charges and recovering, she’s planning to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union later this month. It’s an apparent act of defiance against an administration that’s labeled her a “domestic terrorist” — and won’t take it back.
Martinez, 30, plans to attend the speech as a guest of Democratic U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Chicago.
Christopher Parente, Martinez’s attorney, revealed her plans in a fiery court filing Thursday that not only accused Trump’s Homeland Security of a “campaign of misinformation,” but accused Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office of being “active enablers of an out-of-control client.”
Parente once worked as a prosecutor in Chicago’s U.S. attorney’s office, and on Thursday he invoked its longtime mantra: “Do the right thing.” Instead, he alleged the office “turns a blind eye” while Homeland Security refuses to rescind its past comments about Martinez.
That’s why he said U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis should give Martinez permission to share evidence from her case. Martinez is currently prevented from doing so by a so-called “protective order.” The shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers in Minneapolis motivated Martinez to change that, Parente wrote.
Alexakis is expected to rule Friday.
A spokesman for Boutros’ office declined to comment. Prosecutors earlier this week said they would not object to the release of body-camera footage but objected to the release of text messages written by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum, who shot Martinez.
The evidence at issue would allow the public to see that Martinez “was the victim of an out-of-control Border Patrol agent who was immediately embraced by this [Trump] administration and protected from any scrutiny for his unlawful actions,” Parente wrote.
In one text message by Exum that’s already been released, Exum apparently bragged about shooting Martinez. He wrote, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”
Martinez is a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school. On Oct. 4, she followed a Chevrolet Tahoe driven by Exum, which also carried two additional Border Patrol agents. Martinez honked her horn, yelled “la migra” and tried to warn people about the agents.
She told the Sun-Times and WBEZ this week that things changed after about 20 minutes, once she pulled her Nissan Rogue beside Exum’s Tahoe near 39th and Kedzie. She said he swerved toward her Rogue and their vehicles swiped each other.
Martinez said she stopped her Rogue but feared being “manhandled” by the agents, so she drove away. She said she drove to her “farthest left,” to avoid the agents climbing out of their vehicle on her right. But as she passed, she said Exum opened fire.
She pulled over at a repair shop, was taken to a hospital and eventually into federal custody. Authorities alleged that Martinez and another man “rammed” Exum’s car.
Prosecutors this week said the release of Exum’s text messages “will serve only to further sully Agent Exum, his family, and co-workers without any corresponding benefit to Ms. Martinez.”
Parente called their explanation “shocking.”
“To the extent they would ‘sully’ his reputation more than his previously disclosed disgusting text messages already have, it is a fully deserved self-imposed sullying,” Parente wrote.
The defense attorney complained that law enforcement gathered 30 days of camera images of Martinez’s car, “presumably to support their ‘domestic terrorist’ allegation.”
“They presumably wanted to be able to show her driving from the dynamite factory on Cicero to the suicide vest store on Armitage,” Parente wrote. “Instead they presumably noticed her driving to Target for school supplies and Michael’s for crafting materials for her students.”
Parente has criticized DHS social media posts pushing misinformation about the case. During a hearing on the issue last week, Alexakis said she was “hard-pressed” to understand why the government has yet to “change the narrative” after dropping all charges in November.
At that hearing, a prosecutor told Alexakis he believed it was possible to delete a social media post or “tweet,” but he wasn’t really sure. So Thursday, Parente included instructions for deleting such a post in his court filing.
There are “also a plethora of YouTube videos that can be accessed if they run into issues,” he quipped.
Homeland Security also has yet to rescind its press release about Juan Espinoza Martinez, who was acquitted by a jury last month of offering $10,000 for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.
The Homeland Security press release refers to Espinoza Martinez as a “Latin Kings gang member,” even though prosecutors never set out to prove that claim at trial.
Contacted Thursday, a Homeland Security spokesperson repeated the same statement given to the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this week.
“DHS stands by our press releases and statements,” the spokesperson said. “The facts of what happened did not change.”
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