CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Kill, Lie, and Cover-Up: The Shooting of Ruben Martinez

Still from body cam footage of Ruben Martinez being questioned by local police, moments before the shooting. (Texas Department of Public Safety.)

Eleven months. That’s how long it took DHS to admit that one of its immigration agents killed Ruben Ray Martinez as he sat in his car on South Padre Island on the Gulf Coast of Texas. And even then, they lied about it, claiming that Martinez, a 23-year-old American citizen, had run over an immigration officer, hurling his body onto the hood of his car. A newly released video extracted by a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety shows that Martinez didn’t run over anyone. Like Renee Good, he was executed as he was trying to follow the conflicting orders given by Texas police and federal agents and then slandered as a potential cop killer.

Ruben’s mother, Rachel Reyes, learned of his death when a Texas Ranger knocked on her door in San Antonio. He told her that a few hours earlier, Ruben had been shot and killed after disobeying an order from a law enforcement officer. Two things struck Rachel. First, this didn’t sound like something her son would do. “Ruben was really nice and he didn’t have enemies or make enemies or get in fights, so I would never in my wildest dreams imagine that someone would want to hurt him,” Reyes told the Washington Post. Second, she found it strange that the Ranger didn’t say who shot Ruben. She assumed it was another Ranger.

A report on the incident by South Padre Island police noted  that Martinez had struck a law enforcement officer with his car, describing it as “aggravated assault against a public servant.” The public servant was named as Hector Sosa of Harlingen, Texas. But it didn’t identify the law enforcement agency Sosa worked for and even more strangely failed to mention the shooting of Ruben Martinez. It merely said: “case closed.” In other words, both the Texas Rangers and the South Padre Island police helped bury ICE’s involvement in the killing.

Then she read an article on a South Padre Island news site reporting that a man had been shot in the beach resort town in an “officer-involved shooting,” but that the shooter had been a member of a federal agency.

Rachel called the Ranger who had informed her of Ruben’s death. He was now part of the team investigating the shooting. The Ranger told her that Ruben had been killed by an immigration agent working with the Department of Homeland Security. But DHS made no mention of the shooting or that one of its agents was responsible and concealed its involvement for almost an entire year.

On March 15, Ruben left his house around two in the afternoon and picked up his friend Joshua Ortega. Ruben had just turned 23. He and Ortega drove to South Padre Island to celebrate. South Padre is a party town, favored by college students and spring breakers.

After arriving in South Padre, Martinez and Ortega went to a pool party with friends, had a few drinks, got back in Ruben’s car and went to Whataburger. After eating their food, they drove down the main drag in town, where traffic was backed up from a traffic accident. A Texas Ranger who was directing traffic spotted an open liquor bottle in the backseat of the car and asked Ruben and Joshua about it. Satisfied with their answer, the Ranger waved them on.

It’s at this point that the versions of events begin to diverge, like a South Texas version of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. According to the DHS report on the shooting, ICE agents who were present at the accident scene for some unexplained reason ordered Martinez to get out of the car. Again, they don’t........

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