The most famous killings of U.S. citizens by Department of Homeland Security officers happened earlier this year in Minneapolis. But it turns out the first such killing during Trump’s second term happened almost a year earlier—but DHS refused to acknowledge it. Newly released evidence indicates that they lied to cover up the case.
The Washington Post reports:
The investigative material released Friday by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows that Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, was given conflicting instructions as he encountered law enforcement officers from multiple agencies near the scene of a previous vehicle accident in South Padre Island, Texas, in the early-morning hours of March 15.
His car moved forward very slowly in the moments before Homeland Security Investigations Agent Jack C. Stevens fired three shots into Martinez’s blue Ford sedan. The footage does not show Martinez speeding up rapidly or appearing to target a second Homeland Security Investigations agent, Hector Sosa. …
Sosa told investigators that Martinez’s car struck his legs, causing him to fall over the hood before Stevens opened fire. …
More than a dozen people have been shot by DHS personnel over the past 14 months, including two other fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during immigration enforcement operations. In January, immigration personnel in Minneapolis shot Renée Good and Alex Pretti in separate incidents days apart. Three months earlier, a Border Patrol agent shot and injured Marimar Martinez in Chicago. In each of those three cases, administration officials accused the victims of endangering the officers before they were killed, and some of their characterizations were proved false once more information about the shootings became public.
This is the consistent character of the mass deportation system Donald Trump has established. DHS officers feel emboldened to use deadly force on the slightest provocation or with no provocation at all, and then to lie about it—while they are assured by their superiors, all the way up to the president, that they can do so with total impunity.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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