US citizen shot and killed by federal immigration agent last year, new records show | Trump administration
Newly released records show that a U.S. citizen was shot and killed by a federal immigration officer in Texas last year during a late-night traffic accident that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The death of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez would be the earliest of at least six fatal shootings by federal officers since the nationwide immigration crackdown began during 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 attack involved a Homeland Security Investigations team conducting an immigration enforcement operation alongside local police, according to documents obtained by American Oversight, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group.
The records are part of a batch of heavily redacted internal documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the nonprofit obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Although Martinez’s death on March 15, 2025 was reported by local media at the time, federal and state officials did not disclose that the attack was carried out by the HSI team. In a statement Friday, DHS said the slain driver “intentionally struck a Homeland Security Investigations special agent,” causing another agent to “take defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public.”
The department did not respond to questions about why there had been no press release or public reporting regarding the officer-involved shooting in the past 11 months.
Martinez’s mother, Rachel Reyes, said her son was just days away from his 23rd birthday and that she and his best friend had driven from San Antonio to the beach for a weekend celebration. Located on the Gulf coast just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, South Padre Island is a famous spring break destination that attracts tens of thousands of college-age partygoers each March.
Shortly after midnight, HSI officers were assisting South Padre Island police by directing traffic through a busy intersection following a vehicle crash with multiple injuries, according to a two-page internal ICE incident report included in newly released documents.
A blue, four-door Ford with a driver and a passenger approached the officers, who ordered the driver to stop. The reason for this is not stated in the report. The driver initially did not respond to commands but eventually stopped, according to the report.
Agents then surrounded the vehicle and told those inside to get out, but the driver “accelerated forward” and struck an HSI special agent who was “hugging the hood of the vehicle,” the report said. An HSI supervisory special agent standing next to the car then fired his gun multiple times through the open driver’s side window and the vehicle came to a halt.
Paramedics at the scene of the crash quickly provided medical assistance, and the driver was taken by ambulance to a regional hospital in Brownsville, where he was pronounced dead, according to the report. The passenger, who was also a US citizen, was detained.
The HSI officer struck by the vehicle was treated at a nearby hospital for an unspecified knee injury and released, according to the report.
The names of the two HSI agents involved in the shooting and the names of the two men in the car were redacted from the ICE report, but Reyes confirmed that the driver was his son. He said he was shot three times.
Reyes said she first learned about a week after his son was killed that he was shot by a federal agent rather than a local police officer. He was contacted by an investigator from the Texas Rangers, the lead agency investigating the shooting. Reyes said the investigator told him there was video of the shooting that contradicted the information provided by federal agents. DHS did not immediately respond to an email Friday regarding the alleged video showing a different account.
He said the investigator told him the state report into the shooting was completed in October and that the case would be presented to a grand jury for possible criminal charges.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which includes the Rangers, said Friday that the investigation into the shooting was still “active” and declined to release further information.
