Chicago Woman Shot by Border Patrol to Testify in Congress

Marimar Martinez, a Chicago woman shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in the Brighton Park neighborhood, is set to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington on April 22 at a hearing on what Democrats have called the harmful impacts of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

Martinez’s attorney, Christopher Parente, confirmed her appearance Thursday. The hearing marks the first time she’ll testify before an official congressional committee, a step up from a February forum where she told lawmakers she wanted federal agents held accountable and demanded an apology from the Trump administration.

The hearing is the second day of a session organized around the 61-day government shutdown. Republicans on the committee are using it to blame Democrats for the impasse. Committee Democrats, meanwhile, requested that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan also appear. All three appearances are voluntary.

Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from New York, didn’t hide his skepticism. “The Committee does not believe this request to be in good faith and will be used, instead, as an attempt to politicize national security and gaslight the American public,” he wrote in letters sent Wednesday. Garbarino also took aim at Rep. Delia Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat and committee member, alleging she “refused to let witnesses answer any questions” at a Feb. 10 session and had said, “DHS cannot be reformed; it must be dismantled.”

Martinez was shot five times on Oct. 4 by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum. She has publicly called Exum her “attempted executioner.” Federal charges of impeding law enforcement were filed against her after the shooting and later dropped, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

She’s been building a public presence in Washington for months. On Feb. 3, she appeared at a public forum Congress organized after two Minnesotans were killed by federal immigration officers. She told lawmakers then that she wanted the Trump administration to acknowledge she is “not a domestic terrorist.” On March 3, she attended a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, standing five rows behind then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Noem to say the shooting was “wrong.” Noem repeatedly claimed she didn’t know about the case.

That answer didn’t satisfy Martinez or her supporters in Brighton Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side where the Oct. 4 shooting happened during what federal authorities described as an immigration enforcement operation.

The shooting drew immediate attention from Illinois lawmakers and immigrant rights groups. It’s become one of the sharpest flashpoints in the national debate over federal immigration enforcement tactics, and Martinez’s testimony Wednesday will put a Chicago face directly in front of the committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security.

Ramirez, whose congressional district includes parts of the Chicago area, has been among the most vocal voices pushing for accountability. Garbarino’s criticism of her in the Wednesday letters signals the hearing won’t be a collegial affair. The partisan friction built into the proceeding reflects how thoroughly immigration enforcement has split the committee along party lines since the start of the current congressional session.

Martinez’s path from shooting victim to congressional witness has been watched closely by Chicago immigrant advocacy organizations that have backed her since federal agents opened fire on her last fall. For those groups, her April 22 testimony carries weight beyond the specifics of her case. It puts a survivor in the room.

What the committee does with that testimony is another matter. Garbarino controls the agenda as chair, and Republicans have made clear they see the Democratic witness requests as political theater rather than legitimate oversight. Whether Miller or Homan ultimately show up at the voluntary hearing is unknown as of Thursday.

For Martinez, the stakes are personal. She has said from the beginning that she wants Charles Exum held accountable and wants a direct acknowledgment from federal officials that what happened to her in Brighton Park was wrong. The House Homeland Security Committee’s April 22 session gives her the most formal platform she’s had to make that case, before members of Congress who have the authority, if not necessarily the will, to demand answers from the administration that employs the agent who shot her.