Ruben Ray Martinez was shot during a traffic stop in Texas last year, according to newly released documents
Newly released documents show that a US immigration agent shot and killed an American citizen in Texas in 2025, marking the third known death linked to immigration enforcement operations, multiple media outlets have reported.
The incident happened months before the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis in January during President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. The killings ignited a renewed wave of outrage against the effort.
Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, was killed by a federal agent in South Padre Island in March 2025, multiple news outlets wrote on Friday, citing internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents recently released by the nonprofit watchdog American Oversight. ICE agents were reportedly carrying out immigration enforcement operations in conjunction with local police.
Martinez was shot after he “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent” during a traffic stop, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement cited by multiple outlets.
At the time, local media reported the incident as an officer-involved shooting, but the involvement of federal agents was not revealed until after the internal report was released earlier this week.
Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro has accused ICE of burying the incident.
“I am calling for a full investigation into this shooting, including why there was an 8-month cover up,” he wrote on X on Saturday.
Martinez’s death would mark the earliest of the three known killings of US citizens linked to Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown since the start early in his second term.
Last month’s killings of Good and Pretti caused public outrage, prompting border czar Tom Homan to downsize the force of federal agents deployed in Minneapolis.
Speaking to NBC news earlier in February, Trump acknowledged that his administration could have used a “little bit of a softer touch,” but insisted that the immigration crackdown is targeting “really hard criminals.”
Around half of the 1.6 million illegal immigrants with final deportation orders are convicted criminals, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said last week.
Nevertheless, public support for the crackdown has declined, according to a recent Ipsos poll conducted for the Washington Post and ABC News and published on Friday. Around 58% of Americans feel that the deportations are “going too far,” while 62% oppose the aggressive tactics employed by ICE, it found.
