CHICAGO (AP) — Text messages sent by a Border Patrol agent appear to show he bragged to colleagues about his shooting skills after wounding a woman charged with assaulting a federal officer in Chicago.
Agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez five times on Oct. 4 after authorities say she and another driver rammed vehicles into an SUV Exum was driving on the city's Southwest Side.
The messages were presented as evidence in federal court Wednesday. Martinez, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, are charged with assault on a federal officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
In the text, agent Exum wrote that he had “an amendment to add to” his story. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” the text read.
The shooting occurred as President Donald Trump’s escalation of federal law enforcement continued in cities across the U.S.
On Oct. 5, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged the shooting, saying in a statement that agents “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.” When agents exited their vehicle, “a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively," the statement continued.
No officers were seriously injured.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the woman shot was armed with a semiautomatic weapon. Martinez was treated at a hospital and released before being taken into FBI custody.
When questioned Wednesday by Chris Parente, an attorney for Martinez, Exum testified that he's a firearms instructor "and I take pride in my shooting skills,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Defense attorneys also are concerned about the destruction of evidence after the SUV driven by Exum was later driven from Chicago to the agent's station in Maine and parked in a garage, Exum said.
The SUV suffered scratches, dents and scuff marks when it was sideswiped, the agent said. Photos were taken of the damage. The scuff marks had been buffed in Maine, Exum said.
Martinez alleges that the Border Patrol vehicle swerved and sideswiped her vehicle, according to court documents.
Federal immigration agents in the Chicago area have been accused of unnecessary force, including the use of pepper balls, tear gas and other tactics against people protesting federal immigration policies and the detention of immigrants.
The aggressive tactics have prompted resident backlash and lawsuits.
Another federal judge said Thursday she will order federal agents in Chicago to restrict using force against peaceful protesters and news media outlets, saying current practices violate their constitutional rights.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis’s ruling, which is expected to be appealed by the Trump administration, refines an earlier temporary order that required agents to wear badges and banned them from using certain riot-control techniques, such as tear gas, against peaceful protesters and journalists.
FILE - A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is seen in Park Ridge, Ill., Sept. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term's most consequential cases, President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens. Trump plans to be in attendance.
In arguments Wednesday, the justices will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
Trump will be the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court.
The case frames another test of his assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president's favor, but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices.
The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown.
Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way.
Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs' decision, saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.
He issued a preemptive broadside against the court on Sunday on his Truth Social. “Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!,” the president wrote. “Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!”
Trump's order would upend the longstanding view that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and federal law since 1940 confer citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
The 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” it reads.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as illegal, or likely so, under the Constitution and federal law. The decisions have invoked the high court's 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.
The administration argues that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
The court should use the case to set straight “long-enduring misconceptions about the Constitution’s meaning,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.
No court has accepted that argument, and lawyers for pregnant women whose children would be affected by the order said the Supreme Court should not be the first to do so.
“We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship,” said Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who is facing off against Sauer at the Supreme Court.
More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would be affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.
While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen as the moon rises Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
