Months Before Renee Good, DHS Shot Another Woman And Lied About It | EUROtoday

Marimar Martinez was on her option to donate clothes final October when she observed federal immigration brokers in Brighton Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Chicago. They have been there as a part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which had terrorized the town with raids. When Martinez noticed them, she and others began following them of their autos, honking and shouting “la migra,” warning others they have been immigration brokers. Moments later, her car and that of a Border Patrol officer briefly made contact. He bought out of his automobile and opened hearth, taking pictures her 5 instances.

The Department of Homeland Security referred to as Martinez a “domestic terrorist” and laid out their model of occasions: The officer, Charles Exum, acted in self-defense after he was “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin stated in a assertion. Martinez, who had supposedly appeared in an intelligence bulletin the week prior “for doxing agents” and posting threats on-line, was accused of threatening the officer with a “semi-automatic weapon.”

She was charged with assaulting, impeding and interfering with a federal regulation enforcement officer.

Martinez survived, not like Renee Good, who died after she was shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis this week. Good “was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations” earlier than making an attempt to “run them over,” stated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “It was an act of domestic terrorism,” she added. President Donald Trump referred to as Good a “professional agitator” and claimed she “viciously ran over the ICE officer.”

Good’s demise is an element of a bigger sample in Trump’s second time period: Federal brokers shoot, then the federal government begins a marketing campaign of lies and propaganda.

“They’re doing the exact same thing now because they have to, because how else do you justify shooting a stay-at-home mom with stuffed animals in her car?” Christopher Parente, Martinez’s legal professional, instructed HuffPost, referring to Good’s killing.

“You’ve turned Montessori school teachers and stay-at-home moms into Timothy McVeigh in the minds of these agents, so of course their first reaction is to shoot.”

In response to a request for touch upon Friday, McLaughlin repeated the identical claims from months in the past which have since been debunked, referring to Martinez as a “domestic terrorist” and saying she had “rammed federal agents” together with her car.

Immigration officers have opened hearth 16 instances over the previous 12 months, leading to 4 deaths, in line with The Trace. The authorities usually tells comparable tales in regards to the incidents: An individual stopped by officers tried to run them over, or injured them with their automobile, necessitating using lethal power.

When an ICE officer shot and killed Silverio Villegas Gonzalez after he tried to flee a site visitors cease in his automobile in Chicago in September, DHS claimed that the officer suffered “severe back injuries, lacerations to hands and substantial tears in knee,” however body-camera footage later confirmed the officer stated the only lower he suffered was “nothing major.” Video proof additionally disproved claims that officers confronted life-threatening hazard after they shot and wounded two males in separate incidents in California – Carlitos Ricardo Parias and Francisco Longoria. Carlos Jimenez, one other ICE taking pictures sufferer in California, was charged with assaulting officers along with his automobile, however has argued in courtroom that he was driving round an ICE car when officers shot him within the again.

The claims DHS made towards Martinez, a 30-year-old instructor, have been so skinny they didn’t even make it into courtroom. The charging paperwork famous solely two vehicles following the Border Patrol officers and didn’t point out a gun in any respect. In courtroom, Martinez’s lawyer argued that body-camera footage confirmed that Exum swerved to hit Martinez’s automobile and never the opposite manner round. And Exum himself acknowledged that the car contact “was side to side” relatively than a “head-on” ramming maneuver. After the collision, he yelled “Do something, bitch,” earlier than opening hearth, Parente argued in courtroom. And Martinez had not posted a menace towards federal brokers, opposite to McLaughlin’s assertionher lawyer stated prosecutors instructed him.

Meanwhile, the federal government car concerned within the incident was pushed to Maine, greater than 1,000 miles from Chicago. DHS “ordered the Border Patrol in-house mechanic to buff out all of the alleged damage — in this case, a paint swap, essentially,” Parente alleged to HuffPost. “At which point, we were unable to have our expert look at it and show that it was actually the ICE agent’s car that side-swiped her car … We were in the middle of that destruction-of-evidence hearing when they dismissed the case.”

Federal prosecutors dropped the fees towards Martinez — a spokesperson stated on the time that the workplace of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York was “constantly evaluating new facts and information relating to cases and investigations arising out of Operation Midway Blitz” — and the choose dismissed the case.

Text messages from Exum additionally confirmed him bragging in regards to the taking pictures. “I’m up for another round of ’fuck around and find out,” he wrote. And later: “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

“He was back at work within, I think, three days of the incident in our case,” Parente stated.

For her half, Martinez was left with bullet wounds on her forearm, tricep and elsewhere, in addition to vital psychological trauma, her legal professional stated.

Parente stated he and his shopper are getting ready to sue for damages. “She can’t hold a pen, she can’t close her hand. She’s got extreme physical pain, she’s obviously got mental anguish and pain, so we’re going to be seeking compensation for that.”

“The approach of our government right now is to literally implement the death penalty for minor traffic offenses on the spot, and that is extremely troubling, and it’s going to keep happening,” Parente stated. “In the Martinez case, at best, it was a minor traffic accident. In what world do we live in where when you get into a minor traffic accident on the streets of your city, the driver jumps out and starts shooting at you?

When Parente saw what had happened in Minneapolis, and how the government was quick to smear Good, he wasn’t surprised.

“Normally, I would think the government wouldn’t be so brazen about misinformation,” Parente stated. “But having lived through this, and looking at things that were put out in black-and-white by [McLaughlin]and knowing from the evidence that it’s completely wrong — I now question all of this that’s coming out.”