Federal prosecutors moved on Thursday to dismiss charges against a woman who was shot several times by a border patrol agent last month during the federal immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.
Prosecutors had accused Marimar Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ruiz, 21, of using their vehicles to strike and box in border patrol agent Charles Exum’s SUV on 4 October on Chicago’s south-west side, during the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz”. Exum then exited his car and opened fire on Martinez, who suffered seven gunshot wounds.
Hours before a status hearing, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges against the two defendants, marking a dramatic reversal in one of the most closely watched cases tied to the crackdown in and around the country’s third-largest city.
In a statement sent to the Associated Press, Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, praised the US attorney’s office “for doing the right thing here and dismissing the indictment”.
Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office, said the office is “constantly evaluating new facts and information relating to cases and investigations arising out of Operation Midway Blitz”.
Ruiz’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since Operation Midway Blitz began in September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has characterized protesters as violent rioters and vowed to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
But of the more than two dozen people arrested for impeding or assaulting federal officers or other protest-related offenses, none have gone to trial and charges have been dropped against at least nine of them. Judges have expressed skepticism over the strength of some cases.
The case against Martinez and Ruiz wasn’t the only one prosecutors sought to drop on Thursday. They also moved to dismiss charges against Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old army veteran who was arrested last month during a protest outside a federal immigration facility in the suburb of Broadview, just west of Chicago.
Although prosecutors claimed Briggs refused to move and struck a border patrol agent’s arm as the agent pushed back a crowd, other protesters and activists offered a contrasting narrative, saying an agent, unprovoked, pushed Briggs to the ground.
After they were arrested, Martinez and Ruiz were charged with assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon – a vehicle. No officers were seriously injured.
In text messages presented as evidence during a 5 November hearing, Exum bragged about his marksmanship.
“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes,” the text read. “Put that in your book boys.”
Lawyers for Martinez and Ruiz have consistently challenged the evidence and pushed for the case to quickly move to a trial.
Parente claimed body camera footage contradicted federal prosecutors’ narrative of Martinez’s actions. He said the DHS released “objectively wrong information”, claiming that Exum had “steered into” Martinez rather than the other way around. He also accused federal authorities of tampering with evidence when Exum was allowed to drive the car, which Parente called “critical evidence”, back to Maine rather than keeping it in Chicago to be examined.
Martinez and Ruiz were both released pending trial after a judge noted they had no prior criminal record.
On Thursday, the seventh US circuit court of appeals halted a lower court judge’s order to release on bond hundreds of detained immigrants.
Last week, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings said he would consider a list of more than 600 detainees after determining that the federal government violated a 2022 consent decree that outlines how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can make so-called warrantless arrests.
The federal government objected to dozens as apparent security risks while others had already been deported. That left roughly 400 people to be released as soon as Friday. Detainees would have been released on alternative forms of detention such as ankle monitoring.
But the appeals court halted Cummings’ order, saying it will hear arguments in the case on 2 December.