US citizen shot and killed by federal immigration agent last year, new records show

Shooting death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, in Texas was not publicly disclosed by Department of Homeland Security

Newly released records show a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas by a federal immigration agent last year during a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, would mark the earliest of at least six deadly shootings by federal officers since the start of a nationwide immigration crackdown in Donald Trump’s second term. On Friday, DHS said the shooting on South Padre Island last March occurred after the driver intentionally struck an agent.

The shooting involved a Homeland Security Investigations team that was conducting an immigration enforcement operation in conjunction with local police, according to documents obtained by American Oversight, a non-profit watchdog group based in Washington.

The records are part of a tranche of heavily redacted internal documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the non-profit obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Though Martinez’s death on 15 March 2025 was reported by local media outlets at the time, federal and state authorities did not disclose that the shooting involved the team from HSI. In a statement Friday, DHS said the driver who was killed “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent”, resulting in another agent firing “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public”.

The department did not respond to questions about why it had made no media release or other public notification of the officer-involved shooting over the last 11 months.

Martinez’s mother, Rachel Reyes, said her son was just days past his 23rd birthday when he and his best friend drove from San Antonio down to the beach for the weekend to celebrate. South Padre Island, located on the Gulf coast just north of the US-Mexico border, is a renowned spring break destination that attracts tens of thousands of college-aged partiers each March.

According to an internal two-page ICE incident report included in the newly disclosed documents, shortly after midnight, HSI officers were assisting South Padre Island police by redirecting traffic through a busy intersection after a vehicle accident with several injuries.

A blue, four-door Ford with a driver and passenger approached the officers, who ordered the driver to stop. The report does not say why. Initially, the driver didn’t respond to commands but did eventually come to a stop, according to the report.

Agents then surrounded the vehicle, telling those inside to get out, but the driver “accelerated forward” and struck an HSI special agent “who wound up on the hood of the vehicle”, the report said. An HSI supervisory special agent standing by the side of the car then fired his weapon multiple times through the open driver’s-side window, and the vehicle stopped.

Paramedics already on the scene of the accident quickly provided medical aid and the driver was taken by ambulance to a regional hospital in Brownsville, where he was pronounced dead, according to the report. The passenger, also a US citizen, was taken into custody.

The HSI officer whom the report says was struck by the vehicle was treated for an unspecified knee injury at a nearby hospital and released.

The names of the two HSI agents involved in the shooting and the names of the two men in the car were all redacted from the ICE report, but Reyes confirmed the driver was her son. She said he was shot three times.

Reyes said she first learned her son had been shot by a federal agent, rather than a local police officer, about a week after he was killed. She was contacted by an investigator from the Texas Rangers, the lead agency looking into the shooting. Reyes said the investigator told her there were videos of the shooting that contradicted the account provided by federal agents. DHS did not immediately respond to an email Friday about the claim that there is video showing a different account.

She said she was told by the investigator that the state report into the shooting was completed in October and that the case would be presented to a grand jury for potential criminal charges.

The Texas department of public safety, which includes the Rangers, said in a statement Friday that the investigation into the shooting was still “active” and declined to offer more information.

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