The former federal prosecutor now seeking accountability for Marimar Martinez said Monday her legal team had assembled enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the immigration agent who shot her last fall during Operation Midway Blitz.
Christopher Parente made that declaration while announcing Martinez’s highly anticipated lawsuit against the federal government. She is suing over her Oct. 4, 2025, shooting by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum and the feds’ failed attempt afterward to prosecute her.
To support the lawsuit, Martinez’s lawyers hired experts who produced a forensic reconstruction of the shooting. It purports to show how Exum fired each of his five shots into Martinez’s Nissan Rogue, including one final shot allegedly fired through her rear passenger window.
Parente and attorney Michael Gallagher told reporters they planned to share the presentation with law enforcement. Along the way, they invoked the label applied last fall by Homeland Security to Martinez and asked, “Who’s the real domestic terrorist?”
“Somebody needs to do something,” said Parente, who once served as a federal prosecutor in Chicago and Miami.
Tough talk is typical from attorneys filing lawsuits. But Monday’s came amid an ongoing push to hold agents responsible for their conduct during Midway Blitz. The aggressive deportation campaign that brought chaos to the city’s streets prompted several lawsuits, including one brought by Illinois and Chicago against the Department of Homeland Security.
But no federal agent has been charged with an on-duty crime connected to Midway Blitz.
The Chicago Police Department has begun to investigate Martinez’s shooting, though. The probe has been assigned to a unit staffed with experienced detectives who will look to bring a case to Cook County prosecutors, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s office has said law enforcement has to build a case before her team can consider charges. Burke said as recently as last month that no agency had brought her such a case against a federal agent.
The Justice Department declined to comment Monday. Homeland Security repeated the past claim that Exum had been placed on administrative leave, sharing no additional detail.
Marimar Martinez shows one of her gunshot wound scars during an interview at the Chicago Public Media recording studios in Navy Pier, Sunday, Feb. 01, 2026. Martinez survived five gunshots from a Border Patrol agent in Chicago last fall. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times.
Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times
Exum shot Martinez five times after she spotted him driving a Chevrolet Tahoe that also carried two additional agents and began to follow them in her Rogue. She honked her horn, yelled “la migra” and tried to warn people about the agents.
Then, near 39th Street and Kedzie Avenue, she said Exum swerved toward her Rogue and their vehicles swiped each other. Body-camera footage appeared to show Exum turning his steering wheel to the left, toward Martinez’s Rogue, just before the collision.
Though Martinez initially then stopped her Rogue, she said she feared being “manhandled” by agents. So she said she veered to her “farthest left” to get around the agents, who were climbing out of their vehicle, so she could flee.
Exum opened fire, shooting Martinez and leaving her with seven wounds. Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office later charged her with assaulting a federal officer but dropped the case nearly two months later.
Meanwhile, then-U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino offered after the shooting to put off Exum’s retirement following his “excellent service in Chicago,” records show.
Another supporter told Exum in a text message, “you are a legend among agents you better f—in know that.
“Beers on me when I see you at training.”
Now Martinez has filed her lawsuit against the U.S. government alleging negligence, battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution, false arrest and false imprisonment. Gallagher and Parente said a settlement is unlikely.
“This is a trial,” Gallagher said.
Martinez, a U.S. citizen born and raised in Chicago, began to prominently criticize the Trump administration’s deportation campaign early this year, after immigration authorities in Minneapolis fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“I am their voice,” Martinez told the Sun-Times in February. “I am here for a reason.”
The reconstruction of the shooting scene, by Jeremy Bauer of Bauer Forensics LLC, further undermines the feds’ original claim that Martinez and another man “rammed” agents with their vehicles and that Martinez drove her vehicle toward Exum.
It also contradicts Exum’s alleged past claim to the FBI that he stopped firing once he was no longer in the path of Martinez’s vehicle, her attorneys said.
Bauer used an inspection of Martinez’s vehicle, her wounds, and photo and video from the shooting scene to piece it together, Gallagher said.
Parente said Exum wasn’t even in the path of the Rogue when he fired his first three shots into her windshield from the passenger side of the vehicle. The fourth went through the front passenger window, Parente said. The fifth, he said, went through the rear passenger window.
“He’s behind the vehicle, shooting at her,” Parente said.
Martinez’s lawsuit even alleges “Agent Exum was walking towards Marimar’s vehicle as he continued firing his gun.”
The Illinois Accountability Commission concluded in April that Exum “shot an unarmed civilian without apparent justification”; that “evidence was deliberately tampered with and destroyed”; and “federal agents produced materially inaccurate official reports.”
Martinez did have a firearm with her that day, but it was inside a bright pink holster at the bottom of her purse, and the holster was snapped shut, court records show.
Gov. JB Pritzker, who established the accountability commission, wrote on social media last weekend that Martinez “deserves true justice and accountability from the federal government.”
Pathways exist for state-level prosecutors to file criminal charges against federal agents under certain circumstances. The key legal question is whether federal agents acted reasonably in fulfilling their duties.
O’Neill Burke told WBEZ last month about another potential roadblock she might face: Federal law enforcement is not subject to state-court subpoenas, she said. And if prosecutors don’t have the proper evidence in hand, she added, that possibly “renders the case subject to dismissal.”
But Martinez’s lawyers received a trove of such evidence after the feds tried to prosecute her last fall, her lawsuit points out. It included body-worn camera footage, Exum’s text messages and the agents’ recorded statements to the FBI and federal prosecutors.
The feds leveled charges against at least 33 known people, including Martinez, in connection with Midway Blitz. Most of those cases collapsed without a conviction.
Parente pointed to those failed prosecutions Monday, many of which involved U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while arguing for charges against Exum.
“Had any protester gotten too close to an ICE agent, sneezed on an ICE agent, coughed on an ICE agent, talked around ICE agents — they were indicted with conspiracy charges; they were charged with assault. They were charged with battery, immediately, by this Department of Justice, without any investigation.”
When it comes to the shooting of Martinez, he said, “there’s been no investigation. There’s been no charges.”
But, Parente said, “We have put together conclusive proof, we believe, to charge Charles Exum with criminal charges here in Illinois.
“Whether that be through the federal system or the state system.”