Federal agents shot a woman in the Brighton Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side Saturday morning after they became boxed in by vehicles, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The woman, as well as a man whom authorities say was involved in the chaos, were facing charges Sunday morning.
DHS originally said the shooting happened while agents were patrolling in Broadview, where the department has a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that has been the site of ongoing protests and clashes between agents and demonstrators. But officials later confirmed the incident happened near 40th Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago.
The patrolling agents were rammed by vehicles and “boxed in by 10 cars,” according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
DHS said the agents were unable to move their vehicles and got out of the car. According to DHS officials, one of the drivers of a car boxing them in had a gun, which the agency said was a semi-automatic weapon. DHS said the agents opened fire, striking the driver, who they said is a woman.
According to the federal charging complaint, the Customs and Border Protection agent who opened fire stepped out of his vehicle and shot five times at the woman after she rammed her car into a federal law enforcement vehicle.
Prosecutors said she drove off, but paramedics found her and her car at a repair shop about a mile away, at which point she was taken to a hospital.
A spokesperson for Sinai Health System said the woman was later released from the hospital.
The woman was in FBI custody as of Saturday night, DHS said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois and the FBI announced Sunday that the woman — Marimar Martinez, 40, of Chicago — was charged with forcibly assaulting, impeding, and interfering with a federal law enforcement officer.
DHS claimed the woman was named in a CBP intelligence bulletin last week for doxxing agents and posting threats against ICE online. They have not released any further information on those claims.
A later statement said as ICE agents were responding to the shooting, someone followed them and rammed their vehicle “in an attempt to run them off the road.” This person was arrested and was in the custody of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations last Saturday, DHS said.
Ald. Julia Ramirez (12th) said she saw a man taken by federal agents at a gas station.
“Since then, there was one car that was at this gas station with a person, a U.S. citizen, that has now been detained,” Ramirez said.
Prosecutors said the man — Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, Chicago — faces the same charges at Martinez. Prosecutors alleged he drove away after the collisions with federal agents’ vehicles in Brighton Park, but was found by law enforcement with his car at a gas station about half a block away,
DHS added that an ICE vehicle popped a tire and was “mobbed,” and law enforcement had to abandon the vehicle for their own safety. DHS said the vehicle was “significantly damaged.”
DHS said several U.S. Customs and Border Protection law enforcement officers were “sent to the hospital with various injuries.”
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has deployed special operations teams “to restore law and order,” according to DHS.
Protest erupts at the scene of the shooting
All morning and into the afternoon Saturday, there were tense moments between agents and protesters, with yelling, objects thrown, and officers spraying pepper balls.
Groups of federal agents kept arriving on scene. Four to five undercover federal agents SUVs made their way through the crowd and go underneath tape. Each time they came through, protesters fought back.
“If they are zooming through a crowd of protesters and they are doing it every five minutes to continue the irritation on people, it’s almost like they want people to be provoked,” Ald. Ramirez said.
At one point, a military vehicle pulled up near the protesters, and an agent drew his gun from the roof, pointing it at protesters below.
“Now they got the SWAT truck here like we are like the military now, this is like a war zone here,” Gabriel said.
DHS accused Chicago police of not helping during the incident. DHS also said in its statement that “there is a growing crowd and we are deploying special operations to control the scene.”
Chicago police said in a statement they responded to the 3900 block of South Kedzie Avenue in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood for a report of a person shot.
Chicago police said they responded to document the incident and to maintain safety and traffic control, but are not involved in the incident or investigation. CPD said federal authorities are investigating the shooting and “all further inquiries regarding the circumstances of this shooting should be referred to the appropriate federal authorities.”
contributed to this report.
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