By Renee Hickman and Emily Schmall
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to dismiss the indictment of a Chicago woman who was shot repeatedly by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent during an escalated deportation campaign in the Chicago area this autumn, court records show.
It was not immediately clear why prosecutors dropped the case, but in a statement on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago said it was reviewing “new facts and information” in cases stemming from the monthslong operation.
Marimar Martinez, 30, and a co-defendant, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, were indicted on October 9 on charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon, her car, amid “Operation Midway Blitz,” a period of stepped-up immigration enforcement by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Charges were also dropped against Ruiz on Thursday.
The border patrol agent, Charles Exum, shot Martinez five times on October 4, after their cars collided. He later drove his vehicle – a key piece of evidence in the case – to Maine, and had it repaired. Exum is stationed in Calais, Maine.
Martinez’s attorney, Christopher Parente, earlier told Reuters that he had viewed an agent’s bodycam footage that showed the border patrol car striking her car. The bodycam footage has not been released because of a court order, Parente said.
Exum boasted about his marksmanship in a court hearing about the vehicle on November 5, where text messages he sent about the incident were also presented. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” he wrote in one text.
When asked what he meant by those messages during the hearing, Exum said, “I’m a firearms instructor and I take pride in my shooting skills.” Neither Parente nor Ruiz’s attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.
The case, which the federal government had cited as among the reasons that National Guard troops were needed to support immigration enforcement in Chicago, was one of several dropped against protesters in the Chicago area in recent months.
In October, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago sued Trump to stop his deployment of Texas National Guard soldiers. In response to a federal judge’s order blocking the deployment, the government described the Martinez case as an example of federal immigration officers facing violence from protesters.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon was set to send the troops home from a military training facility near Chicago.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman and Emily Schmall; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)
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