Tag Archive for: Marimar Martinez

There have been three stories told about the incident that led to the shooting of Marimar Martinez on Saturday: DHS propagandist Tricia McLaughlin’s original statement, the claims made in a criminal complaint charging Martinez and another guy with assault, and the revelations from a detention hearing yesterday at which Martinez was released.

The differences people have noted so far are:

How many vehicles were allegedly following the Tahoe carrying the CBP officers?

Tricia McLaughlin claimed that ten cars were following the CBP vehicle.

A video from before the conflict does show a lot of vehicles, but it’s not clear how many are following as opposed to, you know, driving.

One thing the video does not show is a detail in the complaint: that there was a dark pickup truck in front of the Tahoe, which is critical to their claim they were boxed in.

Specifically, according to BPAs 2 and 3, a dark pickup truck cut in front of the CBP Vehicle, the Martinez Vehicle drove up along the driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle, the Ruiz Vehicle drove up along the passenger’s side of the CBP Vehicle, and another vehicle drove near the rear of the CBP Vehicle. According to BPAs 2 and 3, the CBP Vehicle regularly used its lights and sirens while driving.

What role did her gun play?

McLaughlin’s original statement implied, but did not state, that Martinez brandished a semi-automatic weapon at the officers.

One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.

The complaint made no mention of Martinez having a gun.

At her detention hearing the other day, a prosecutor explained that there was a gun in her vehicle, apparently in her purse (for which she had a concealed carry license), but she never brandished it.

But in court Monday, Hennessy said Martinez had a loaded firearm on the passenger side of her car but never brandished it. Martinez’s attorney, Parente, said she has a valid firearm and concealed-carry license.

Who rammed who?

DHS claims that Martinez (and Anthony Ruiz, her co-defendant) rammed the Tahoe simultaneously.

According to the BPAs, at approximately the intersection of 39th and Kedzie, the Martinez Vehicle drove into and side-swiped the driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle. A moment thereafter, the Ruiz Vehicle drove into and struck the rear right quadrant of the CBP Vehicle.

Parente claims that the Tahoe drove into Martinez’ vehicle.

Parente said the video shows an agent turn a federal vehicle left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something b—-.” The agent then exits the vehicle and shoots at Martinez.

The damage to her car, with her wheel well jammed in, is consistent with her being rammed by a larger vehicle, not vice versa.

Indeed, the damage to the Tahoe is inconsistent with the claims the Border Patrol officers made to the affiant: If Martinez had hit the Tahoe on the side of the driver’s door, they would have been stuck in the car, but the driver was able to get out and shoot at Martinez. Moreover, at least some of the shots went through her windshield, meaning she would have been further back.

How the Border Patrol came to be in that neighborhood?

But the more interesting part of the tale told in the criminal complaint is how the Tahoe came to be in the neighborhood.

McLaughlin claimed the officers were “conducting routine patrolling in the greater Broadview area,” where the ICE facility is. The officers told the affiant a wildly different story: that they showed up in the Brighton Park area after diverting the convoy from other officers they had worked with in Oak Lawn, which is how they came to be driving north on Kedzie.

7. According to the BPAs, their assigned area of operation on or about October 4, 2025, was Oak Lawn, Illinois. According to BPA 3, while operating the CBP Vehicle in or around Oak Lawn, multiple civilian vehicles began to follow the CBP Vehicle and vehicles driven by other CBP agents. According to BPA 3, many of the civilian vehicles drove aggressively and erratically towards the CBP Vehicle, including by driving within inches of the CBP Vehicle, pulling up alongside both the passenger’s and driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle, and disobeying traffic laws, including running red lights and stop signs, driving in the wrong lane, and driving the wrong way down one-way streets in order to pursue the CBP Vehicles.

8. According to the BPAs, BPA 1 drove the CBP Vehicle away from vehicles driven by other CBP agents in an effort to draw the pursuing civilian vehicles away from the other CBP agents, which ultimately resulted in the BPAs driving the CBP Vehicle northbound on Kedzie Avenue, in Chicago

That is, Border Patrol only ended up at “approximately” the intersection of 39th and Kedzie, they claim, because they were pursued there by Martinez and others.

How Martinez knew they were federal law enforcement officers?

Which brings me to the — by far, in my opinion — biggest discrepancy.

The Tahoe was unmarked. You can’t charge someone under 18 USC 111 for ramming an unmarked car unless you can prove that they knew you were a Federal law enforcement officer.

The complaint substantiates that knowledge by claiming they were using a siren (not visible in the video above) and that Martinez was shouting “la migra” at them.

According to BPAs 2 and 3, the CBP Vehicle regularly used its lights and sirens while driving. In addition, according to BPAs 2 and 3, the driver of the Martinez Vehicle regularly and loudly referred to the BPAs as “la migra.”

Now, curiously, of the three guys, only one, the guy sitting on the passenger side rear, the furthest from Martinez, had his body worn camera turned on. That’s the camera that shows the driver of the Tahoe ramming Martinez as opposed to vice versa.

The only things the complaint uses that one bodycam to corroborate are:

• The time of the claimed ramming, 10:29AM
• That the driver shot “approximately” five shots at Martinez
• What Ruiz did after the incident

It does not claim that either the sirens or Martinez’ very loud calls of “la migra” were captured in the bodycam. Virtually everything else in this complaint is based off seventeen otherwise uncorroborated claims of the Border Patrol Agents.

But what the complaint does not mention — but McLaughlin did — is that CBP was already out looking for Martinez because she had doxed a CBP officer as a YouTuber.

The armed woman was named in a CBP intelligence bulletin last week for doxing agents online.

[snip]

Just last week, an internal threat intelligence bulleting was circulated about the armed woman for doxing law enforcement officers online.

And that officer — the guy whose identity Martinez allegedly doxed — is the guy involved in a brutal assault at what I believe is just two blocks away, possibly also on Saturday.

The story McLaughlin told is that CBP happened to be chased into the Brighton Park neighborhood by the same person who had doxed their officer days earlier, she brandished a gun, and they shot in defense.

The story CBP told, after trying to figure out what story to tell, is that she rammed their car and they retaliated by shooting “defensively.” (They appear to have given up the claim that she showed them the gun, which they presumably found in a search of her vehicle.)

But another story tells that Martinez identified the YouTube channel of one of the guys who’d been patrolling the neighborhood, and days later, CBP ended up screaming, “Do something bitch” at her before they rammed her car and started shooting.