We Have to Look Right in the Face of What We Have Become

On Oct. 4, Marimar Martinez, a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school, was driving in Chicago when she observed federal immigration agents on patrol. She had begun to honk her horn to warn her neighbors about their presence when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Moments later, the agent in the vehicle, Charles Exum, fired multiple shots into Martinez’s car, hitting her again and again. (Later, Exum would brag to colleagues that he had “fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.”)

Prosecutors for the government charged Martinez with assaulting a federal officer and accused her of trying to ram Exum with her car. The Department of Homeland Security described her actions as domestic terrorism, a charge the agency would repeat after the death of Renee Good in January at the hands of another immigration agent.

The government’s case unraveled, however, when it became clear that its story did not fit the evidence — evidence that officials with Customs and Border Protection tried to hide. The government dropped its case against Martinez a month later, and on Friday a federal judge authorized the release of the body camera footage so that the public could see the incident for itself.

Recently, Martinez joined with other Americans brutalized by federal immigration agents to tell their stories to a forum of congressional Democrats led by Representative Robert Garcia of California and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Garcia and Blumenthal convened the event to collect testimony on — and highlight — “the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/opinion/ice-victims-hearings-justice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LlA.9wz4.knEuc6Mb5Wfu&smid=url-share