[No, that’s not an actual forecast.] Still awake? Yeah, me too. Ran across this little gem on RS yesterday (at about 9 pm) and lost it in all the other RS tabs I have open. Oops. Since I’m still wide damn awake, figured I’d write. This is not insomnia like the last time. I got up too late, so now I’m going to go to sleep “late” and then make the cycle worse tomorrow. I’m sure that was more than you ever wanted to know. Moving along, yes, it gets icey in Texas. With (wide-awake) thanks to Raw Story:
Demands for accountability are mounting after internal records revealed this week that an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations fatally shot Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old US citizen, almost a year ago in South Padre Island, Texas. “While Martinez’s death was reported in local media at the time, the reports did not identify HSI involvement or disclose that a federal agent fired the shots through the driver-side window,” Newsweek reported, citing publicly available information
“It shouldn’t take 11 months and a FOIA lawsuit to learn that the government killed someone,” American Oversight said on social media late Friday. Separately, the watchdog noted that “the details sound similar to the death of Renee Good,” a 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three fatally shot by officer Jonathan Ross last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and records obtained by American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Almost a year. This was hidden for almost a YEAR. And we thought they hadn’t started killing people until Renee. That’s both embarrassing and disturbing. But it was covered locally and then dropped out of sight. We hadn’t had everyone recording ICE all the time. Still, to find out that they were killing people that far back just hurts. And they hadn’t hired all the morons yet!
Good’s killing, and two Customs and Border Protection agents’ subsequent fatal shooting of 37-year-old US citizen and nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, have fueled outrage over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, resulting in a congressional funding fight that has partially shut down the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees both agencies.
ICE’s internal report on the Texas shooting states that HSI agents were helping redirect traffic at the site of a major accident early on March 15, 2025. Martinez and his passengers aren’t named, but the document claims that the driver of a blue four-door Ford “failed to follow instructions,” including verbal commands to stop and exit the vehicle.
WHY were they directing traffic? That wasn’t their job! Or is it another one of those ICE-caused major accidents like we are seeing more and more? Heh, if ICE causes the accident, does their insurance pay for it? What do you want to bet that it would be one helluva fight to get someone’s car repaired for an accident *they* caused? Yup, that’s the government.
The revelations this week have generated concern. André Treiber, the Democratic National Committee’s Youth Coordinating Council chair, wrote on social media Friday evening that “ICE murdered a Texan last March and we are only just learning about it now. They are once again offering the excuse that this was done in self-defense, but forgive me if I am extremely skeptical after they’ve been caught lying about that exact same thing multiple times already.”
US Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), whose Chicagoland district has also faced a recent ICE invasion, pointed to other deaths tied to the agency, including those of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, who was shot by ICE in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park last September; Keith Porter Jr., who was shot by an off-duty agent on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, California; and Linda Davis, a special education teacher in Savannah, Georgia, who was killed in a Monday car crash that involved a man fleeing ICE.
“For a whole year, DHS hid that they murdered Ruben, a young man in Texas, after a traffic stop. Just like they did with Silverio, Renee, Keith, Alex, and Linda, they lied and avoided accountability,” said Ramirez, who supports abolishing ICE. “How many more people have to be executed before my colleagues realize that reforms are not enough?”
How many, indeed. It should be zero, but we know better. It’s never that simple. And ICE/CBP is that badly trained, and will continue to be. They’re like the stereotypical roving gangs, no guard rails, and they do what they want, when they want. There is a LOT more to this article, so please check it out when you have a few minutes. We don’t need to add another name to the list. We shouldn’t even *have* a list. What else is there that we don’t know about? It needs to STOP. And yes, it gets ICE-y in Texas.
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