SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
chicago
Prosecutors Abruptly Drop Charges Against Woman Shot by Border Patrol Agent in Chicago
US attorneys offered no justification for their sudden decision to dismiss the case.
Nov 20, 2025
Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop criminal charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was shot multiple times by a US Border Patrol agent last month in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood.
As reported by local news station WTTW, prosecutors filed a one-page motion asking the court to dismiss the indictment against both Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, who had been accused of assaulting a federal immigration officer by intentionally ramming their vehicle into the officer's car.
The US attorneys who filed the motion to dismiss offered no further explanation for their decision to drop the case.
In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Martinez and Ruiz were part of a larger group of people in cars that was trailing immigration officers' vehicles as they conducted operations in Brighton Park.
Prosecutors said that the Border Patrol agent who shot Martinez had been acting in self-defense, and that he had only opened fire after Martinez's car collided with his vehicle.
However, recently uncovered text messages showed the Border Patrol agent apparently bragging about shooting Martinez, as he boasted that he "fired five rounds and she had seven holes" in a message sent to fellow agents.
An attorney representing Martinez claimed last month that he had seen body camera footage that directly undermined the US Department of Homeland Security's claims about how the shooting unfolded.
Gregory Pratt, an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, said the dismissal of the case was yet more evidence that the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement operations appear to be backfiring.
"This follows several dropped prosecutions against protesters," he wrote on Bluesky. "To say the immigration raids have been all around mess is an understatement."
Keep ReadingShow Less
How Many People Were Charged After DHS Claimed Chicago Building Was Filled With 'Terrorists'? Zero.
“The department I once served is engaging in fascist shows of force,” said Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.
Nov 13, 2025
Late at night on September 30, over 300 federal agents stormed an apartment building in one of Chicago's lowest-income neighborhoods. After descending from Black Hawk helicopters, they broke down residents' doors, destroyed furniture and belongings, deployed flash-bang grenades, and dragged sleeping people—some naked—out into the cold evening. Dozens of people, including children and American citizens, were held in zip ties and detained for hours.
As part of the highly publicized raid at the South Shore complex, which was filmed and edited into a miniature action film by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), at least 37 Venezuelan residents of the apartment complex were taken into custody.
On Thursday, an investigation by ProPublica revealed that the raid, heralded by the Trump administration as a counterterrorism victory, has resulted in zero charges against the people who were detained.
In the wake of public backlash to the militarized raid’s extraordinary, indiscriminate brutality, the assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, claimed that the operation "successfully resulted in the arrest of two confirmed Tren de Aragua members,“ describing the cartel as ”a terrorist organization.“ She added that ”One of these members was a positive match on the terror screening watchlist.“
She added that others who were detained had their own rap sheets, including "domestic battery, family violence, battery against a public safety official, aggravated unlawful use of a firearm, retail theft, soliciting prostitution, possession of a controlled substance," while another "had an active warrant and was listed as armed and dangerous [with] weapons offenses."
Stephen Miller, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump and an architect of his "mass deportation" policy, said that the building was "filled with TdA terrorists" and that the raid had “saved God knows how many lives."
But ProPublica's report called many of the government’s claims into question. The government has not released the names of the 37 Venezuelans detained in the raid, but reporters identified the names of 21 of them and interviewed 12.
The report found that contrary to the government's claims of their rampant criminality, federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against a single person who was arrested. They have also not provided any evidence that two of the men arrested were part of the Tren de Aragua gang.
The names of the two supposed gang members have not been made public, but ProPublica managed to track down one of them—24-year-old Ludwing Jeanpier Parra Pérez—using another government press release that described him as a “confirmed member” of the terrorist cartel.
While the release also described him as a “criminal illegal alien,” the only criminal charges ever filed against him—for drug possession and driving without a license after a traffic stop last year—were dropped. No other charges against him, related to gang activity or anything else, have been filed.
"I don’t have anything to do with that,” Parra told ProPublica from the Indiana jail where he's detained along with 17 others nabbed in the raid. “I’m very worried. I don’t know why they are saying that. I came here to find a better future for me and my family.”
ProPublica said its reporters have also observed eight immigration court hearings for the detained individuals, many of whom have asked to be deported back to Venezuela. In not a single one of the hearings has a government attorney mentioned any pending criminal charges against them while arguing for their deportation, nor have they alleged that any of them have affiliations with Tren de Aragua.
Judges have instead ordered them deported or granted voluntary departure, which the outlet noted is "a sign that they are not seen as a serious threat and can apply for return to the United States."
Mark Rotert, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney in Chicago, told ProPublica that if these detainees actually had the long criminal histories the government claimed they do, they would likely pursue charges.
“Do they really believe they have people who are members of a violent organized crime gang?" he said. "If they believe they have people who fit that criteria, I would be very surprised if they were satisfied with only deporting them.”
As far as other crimes, ProPublica found that 18 of the 21 detainees they identified had no criminal charges against them. Meanwhile, the other three, who were charged with offenses “ranging from drug possession to battery,” have all had their charges dropped.
Among those rounded up at the South Shore apartment who spoke to ProPublica were a man with a steady job at a taco restaurant who has a daughter in elementary school, and a construction worker and former Venezuelan army paratrooper who is raising four children.
The investigation's findings are in line with how the Trump administration has attempted to sell its militaristic Operation Midway Blitz and other prongs of its mass deportation crusade to the public.
While the White House has persistently claimed to be targeting “the worst of the worst” criminals, the latest immigration data shows that around 72% of current detainees have no criminal convictions. Previous data from the libertarian Cato Institute has shown that 93% of ICE book-ins were for non-criminals and nonviolent offenders.
Michael D. Baker, an immigration and criminal defense lawyer based in Chicago, described it as laughable that a "300-agent raid" was being "called a terrorist victory" even while it had "zero criminal charges."
"The Trump administration’s showcase anti-gang operation was built on spectacle, not evidence," he said.
In response to the story, Miles Taylor, who served in the DHS from 2017-19, including as its chief of staff, during the first Trump administration, lamented on social media that the department "is no longer recognizable."
"The department I once served is engaging in fascist shows of force," he said, "violating the rights of Americans—only to satiate the creepy desires of an old man who wants to seem macho."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Reign of Terror' in Chicago as Locals Suffer Under 'Secret Police' Sent by Trump
"I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot."
Nov 10, 2025
Chicago residents are increasingly resisting operations being conducted by federal immigration enforcement operations being conducted in their city, while at the same time warning the rest of the country about the trauma federal agents are inflicting on their communities.
In a lengthy article published in the Chicago Tribune over the weekend, journalist Andrew Carter documented how residents of the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, which has been the target of multiple raids over the last month, have created a network of neighbors who carry whistles with them at all times so they can alert people when federal agents are in the area.
Baltazar Enriquez, president of the community counsel in Little Village, told Carter that he began walking around wearing a whistle this past June, and he said that since then "it grew like wildfire," and spread to other neighborhoods in the city.
One person who has joined in the resistance to the immigration raids is Lisa Porter, a 53-year-old suburban mother who told Carter that she had never been much of an activist until she found herself horrified by videos of masked agents snatching people off the streets.
Porter said that she's been following the lead of other Chicagoans in trying to warn people in her neighborhood whenever federal agents are in the area. In one particularly memorable instance, Porter said she saw a young man mowing a lawn in her neighborhood and told him to keep an eye out for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols that she'd seen earlier.
"They came and took my dad 10 minutes ago," the young man said in reply.
Kyle Kingsbury, a Chicago-based computer safety researcher, wrote on his personal blog over the weekend about the pervasive sense of fear that has consumed his community ever since immigration officials began ramping up operations earlier this fall.
In his lengthy essay, Kingsbury said that he is constantly receiving messages from neighborhood watch groups alerting him about masked federal agents detaining people while going about their daily lives, including one notorious recent incident where officials dragged a woman out of the local childcare facility where she worked.
"This weight presses on me every day," he explained. "I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help."
Kingsbury also warned that federal immigration officials, whether in the form of ICE or the US Border Patrol, are acting like an unaccountable secret police force akin to those typically seen in totalitarian states.
"I want you to understand, regardless of your politics, the historical danger of a secret police," he wrote. "What happens when a militia is deployed in our neighborhoods and against our own people. Left unchecked their mandate will grow; the boundaries of acceptable identity and speech will shrink."
Chicago Alderman Mike Rodriguez, who represents Little Village, told Block Club Chicago on Monday that recent Border Patrol operations in the neighborhood have been like a "reign of terror," and he noted that agents once again deployed tear gas while making arrests over the weekend.
Despite angry condemnations from local officials and residents, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino appears completely unbowed.
As Block Club Chicago reported, Bovino brought dozens of agents with him on Monday for a photo-op at the famous Cloud Gate sculpture—often called The Bean—in Millennium Park in which they smiled and collectively said "Little Village," in mocking reference to the neighborhood they've been raiding, as photographers snapped pictures.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular