Body camera footage shows federal immigration agents and police officers surrounding Ruben Ray Martinez after he was shot on March 15, 2025 in South Padre Island, Texas.
(Image via South Padre Island Police Department)Materials released over the weekend by the Texas Department of Public Safety regarding a homeland security officer’s killing of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez last March in Texas appeared to provide the latest evidence that federal agents have misled the public about the circumstances surrounding fatal shootings.
American Oversight, a government watchdog group, revealed last month that nearly a year before the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Martinez was the first known US citizen to be killed by an agent of the Trump administration who was carrying out official duties.
Since then, a grand jury has declined to indict the accused officer, Homeland Security Investigations agent Jack C. Stevens, and American Oversight as well as Martinez’s family and lawyers have demanded that state authorities release the findings of their investigation into the killing, with the watchdog filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
The body camera footage released on Saturday called into question statements that were made by the Department of Homeland Security after Martinez’s killing was publicly revealed, when a DHS spokesperson said the young man “intentionally ran over” an agent.
Internal documents also claimed officers commanded Martinez to get out of his car after he approached the scene of a vehicle accident and that he “accelerated forward, striking a HSI special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.”
The video that was released came from a body camera worn by a South Padre Island, Texas police officer who was one of a number of local, state, and federal agents securing an area after a car accident.
About 21 minutes into the officer’s footage, someone can be heard saying, “Keep going” as Martinez’s car approaches the scene. The car briefly stops for some pedestrians, and officers soon appear to become concerned, running toward the vehicle and shouting, “Stop him” and, “Get him out.”
Martinez’s car appears to be moving slowly, with the brake lights on, as three gunshots are heard and just after.
The video then shows an officer removing Martinez from the car and throwing him on the ground while his friend who was in the car with him, Joshua Orta, is taken into custody.
The internal DHS documents said a second HSI agent Hector Sosa, was struck by the car in his legs, falling over the hood. The footage is taken from behind the car, making it unclear whether Sosa was hit—but it does not show Martinez accelerating.
If an officer was hit, University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey P. Albert told the Washington Post, based on the footage of the car it would have been a case of “officer-created jeopardy.”
“The contradictory orders are confusing and may have been a strong influence,” Alpert told the Post. “The speed is slow and doesn’t appear threatening. Could the officer have moved away? At worst, all he has to do is step aside.”
He added that the body camera video raises “a lot of red flags.”
Lawyers for Martinez’s family, Charles M. Stam and Alex Stamm, said in a statement that the videos confirm the 23-year-old’s car “was barely moving when he was shot.”
“He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger,” said the attorneys.
Orta, who was killed last month in an unrelated vehicle accident in San Antonio, provided a witness statement after Martinez was killed, saying “I state clearly and without hesitation that Ruben did not hit anyone,” Orta wrote. “The trooper seemed to be trying to get in front of the car, like he wasn’t moving out of the way when we tried to turn around and leave like the police officer told us to do.”
More than a dozen people have been killed by federal immigration officers since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025.
In the case of Good, an independent autopsy was conducted as part of a civil investigation into her killing and found “strong evidence” against the agent who shot her, calling into question the Trump administration’s claim that the officer had killed the 37-year-old in self-defense.
A preliminary government investigation into Pretti’s killing did not find that the legal observer had threatened or attacked the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents who fatally shot him, as the administration had first claimed.
Both Pretti and Good were immediately denounced as “domestic terrorists” by administration officials.
DHS also claimed that Marimar Martinez, a Chicago resident who was shot several times by a federal agent but survived last October, had “rammed” officers’ vehicles. Body camera footage and text messages from officers later undermined those claims. Federal prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case against Martinez weeks after she was shot.
The video of Martinez’s killing in Texas, said columnist Nicholas Kristof, suggests that the DHS account of that incident “may be a lie” as well.