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Martinez, who is 31, stumbled into a truck stop on the South Side of Chicago after being shot five times by a federal immigration officer. About a mile away, the agent who shot her was standing on the side of the road with a group of other agents. “I’m good, bro,” he told one of them.

While Martinez was still being treated for her wounds, D.H.S. called her a domestic terrorist. She learned this two days later when she was released from a jail. The phrase made her think of “someone who builds bombs,” or “Osama bin Laden’s daughter.” “Literally the opposite of me,” she told me.

13/3/26, 10:15 pm0 reposts0 likes

Later, she saw Kash Patel share a video an SUV aggressively ramming an agent’s car. He attributed the video to her case, but the SUV wasn’t hers. She saw Tricia McLaughlin attribute a quote to her, “Hey to all my gang let’s f— those mother f—-s up,” but she had never written it.

The process was disorienting. While recovering from injuries, she also fought to restore her reputation and, with it, a sense of reality. “I don’t anticipate this Administration ever retracting their statements. The truth does not matter,” a lawyer in another shooting case said.

One thing that makes the Martinez shooting a valuable case study is the insight it provides into the mindset of the agent involved. We see his texts with other federal agents, hear his court testimony, and listen in to conversations with fellow federal agents immediately after the shooting.