Mother seeks accountability 16 months after ICE agent killed her son in Texas

At least 10 people killed in ICE encounters since Trump returned to office, data show

Rachel Reyes said Wednesday she is still waiting for justice 16 months after her son was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, a death that she said has been compounded by a lack of transparency and the nearly year-long delay before the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged the agency’s involvement.

“It really breaks my heart for the families because I understand the nightmare they’re going through,” Reyes said of the relatives of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, two men killed by ICE agents during traffic stops in July 2026 in Houston and Maine, respectively.

Her son, Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, was shot in the early morning of March 15, 2025, on South Padre Island, a resort community in south Texas. After a night celebrating his birthday, Martinez approached an intersection where officers from multiple agencies, including Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of ICE, were managing a crash scene. DHS told NPR that Martinez “intentionally ran over” an HSI officer, causing the officer to land on the hood of the vehicle, and that another agent “fired defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public.” The agency said the officer who made contact with the car sustained a knee injury.

Body-camera footage from state and local officers, released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, showed Martinez was given conflicting directions before he slowly drove forward and to the left. Videos reviewed by NPR did not clearly show whether the vehicle struck an agent, according to the outlet’s account of the footage.

A Cameron County grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against the federal agent in late February 2026. It took DHS 11 months to publicly disclose the agency’s involvement, an acknowledgment that came only after the watchdog group American Oversight filed a public-records request for documents related to ICE’s use of force.

Martinez’s mother described the experience as a betrayal. “It’s just really upsetting, the whole thing, because I know what it feels like, and it’s incredibly frustrating to be treated like if your loved one’s life doesn’t matter,” Reyes said. She wrote about the need for greater transparency and accountability in an op-ed for The New York Times.

At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration-enforcement officers during Trump’s second term, according to an Associated Press tally. The Trace, a nonprofit journalism site focused on gun violence, counted 29 instances in which ICE agents fired at civilians since the start of that term, at least seven of them fatal.

The latest fatal shootings — of Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7 and Durán Guerrero in Maine days later — prompted DHS to plan a halt to nonurgent vehicle stops. But one day after reports of the planned pause, Trump posted on Truth Social that traffic stops must continue. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” he wrote. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later called vehicle stops “a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continue their deportation campaign.”

In the Salgado Araujo incident, DHS gave an account similar to the one it offered in Martinez’s case, saying the man attempted to flee a traffic stop and weaponized his vehicle. Passengers in the van driven by Salgado Araujo disputed ICE’s version of events, Houston Public Media reported. In neither the Houston nor the Maine shooting were ICE agents wearing body cameras, despite a DHS pledge to equip all immigration agents with body cameras that has not been fulfilled.

Beyond shooting incidents, a recent American Civil Liberties Union report documented dozens of instances across eight states since January 2025 in which immigration officers rammed into vehicles, smashed windows and struck people with cars.

In Minnesota, it remains unclear whether federal agents will be charged in the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, killed in January. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said her office had finally received evidence that the Justice Department had previously withheld, including body-camera footage, according to MPR News. A Minnesota ICE agent has been charged in a nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man, also in January, but prosecuting federal agents is difficult and relatively rare because they have broad legal protections while performing their duties.

Reyes’s attorney, Charles Stam, said the barriers the family has faced highlight the broader vulnerability of those killed in ICE encounters. “If a U.S. citizen killed by an ICE agent cannot get a serious federal investigation or an admission of fault, imagine the odds facing families whose immigration status is precarious, who lack legal representation, or whose loved one’s death did not happen to be caught on camera,” Stam said.

Reyes said she had hoped deadly encounters would decrease after Markwayne Mullin took over leadership of the Department of Homeland Security in March, but the recent shootings have left her uncertain about what it will take to see accountability.

“It shouldn’t be our new normal,” she said. “They’re destroying more families with all this chaos and it’s not right.”