Chicago Border Patrol Shooter Cited ‘Big Time’ Support From DHS

The Border Patrol agent who shot a Chicago woman multiple times last fall bragged about it to a text message group chat after the shooting and said he had the support of Department of Homeland Security leaders, according to records made public Tuesday.

“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes,” Charles Exum sent a group called “Posse Chat” just days after he shot Marimar Martinez. “Put that in your book boys.”

The texts were among a slew of evidence made public after Martinez’s attorneys persuaded a judge to lift much of a protective order that had shielded much of the material. Christopher Parente of Cheronis & Parente in recent court hearings cited recent high-profile killings by immigration officials in Minnesota as well as character attacks by federal officials who wouldn’t recant their description of Martinez as a “domestic terrorist.”

Martinez, a 30-year-old teaching aide, was initially accused of ramming her car into immigration agents in what Trump administration officials called a violent, coordinated attack in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. She was criminally charged, but prosecutors dropped that case less than two months later.

Martinez’s attorneys are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday to announce their plans to file a civil lawsuit related to the shooting. They say Martinez was driving alongside the agents’ SUV when the agents deliberately sideswiped her.

The released texts also show Exum saying he had received “big time” support from higher-ups in the Department of Homeland Security, including Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, Secretary Kristi Noem, “and El Jefe himself...according to Bovino"—an apparent reference to the president.

The day of the shooting, Bovino offered to extend Exum’s time on the job, according to the records.

“In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” he wrote in an email to Exum, sent just hours after the shooting.

The case is United States v. Martinez, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cr-00636.