Texas Man Shot Dead by ICE Agent Months Before Killings in Minneapolis

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, TX — Three months into President Donald Trump’s mass deportation undertaking, an ICE officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in South Padre Island last March, according to recently released records.

Agents assigned to a Department of Homeland Security subagency fatally shot 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez of San Antonio multiple times in the early hours of March 15 while they helped local police direct traffic at the scene of a car crash, records released by American Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog, show. 

In a statement Friday, DHS confirmed the shooting and said Martinez “intentionally” ran over an agent, who was taken to a hospital for a knee injury.

Local media had reported on the shooting, but it was not clear until last week that federal immigration officers were involved. 

The records also detail another non-fatal and previously unreported incident that occurred in Beaumont a month before Martinez’s shooting. 

“Since Ruben’s death a year ago, all we have wanted is justice for him and we have struggled with the silence surrounding his killing,” his mother, Rachel Reyes, said in a statement. “Now, the country is in crisis — and, terribly, heartbreakingly, other families are enduring what we have. It’s my hope that attention being raised now into Ruben’s death will help bring the justice we want for him and the answers we haven’t had.”

The DHS incident report chronicles a chaotic scene that resulted in Martinez’s death. DHS agents wrote in the report that Martinez failed to follow traffic instructions, so they surrounded his car. When he accelerated, according to the report, Martinez allegedly struck an agent who ended up on the hood — which prompted another agent to unload an unspecified number of rounds through the driver’s side window. 

“The vehicle came to a stop and both driver and passenger were immediately secured,” the report states. Federal agents took Martinez to a hospital in Brownsville, where he later died. 

The Texas Department of Public Safety’s Rangers are investigating the shooting. A DPS spokesperson said the agency is not going to comment on the incident since it’s an active investigation.

News of Martinez’s death by an ICE agent arrives amid protests around the country after two people in Minnesota — one of whom also struck an ICE agent with her vehicle — were killed while interfering with ICE operations earlier this year.