SAN ANTONIO – New details are coming to light about a 23-year-old San Antonio man who was killed after a shooting involving Homeland Security special agents last year on South Padre Island.
Ruben Ray Martinez died at a hospital after the shooting on March 15, 2025, the Texas Department of Public Safety told KRGV, but it was never publicly confirmed how he was killed or who killed him.
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The investigation by the Texas Rangers remains ongoing, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
However, internal documents obtained by nonprofit American Oversight show the department knew an HSI special agent shot Martinez as early as March 17.
According to the Significant Incident Report obtained by American Oversight through an open records request, the special agent discharged “multiple rounds” at Martinez, who was later described as “hit by the discharged rounds.”
KSAT has not independently obtained the report. According to its website, American Oversight is a nonpartisan organization focused on government transparency.
According to a DHS spokesperson, HSI investigators were assisting the South Padre Island Police Department with traffic control after a “major accident.”
Homeland Security special agents were redirecting traffic just after midnight, the report states, and Martinez failed to follow the detour route instructions.
Martinez then stopped his vehicle at the instruction of multiple agents, according to the report.
Agents then surrounded the vehicle and ordered him to exit, the report said, but Martinez drove forward and struck an agent, who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.
The agent was taken to a local hospital for a knee injury and was later released.
After Martinez hit the agent, another special agent then began firing “multiple rounds at the driver through the open driver’s side window.”
A DPS spokesperson described these as “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public,” but the department still has not publicly identified whether the bullets hit Martinez and whether it was the cause of his death.
Medical aid was rendered to Martinez by HSI agents and paramedics already on the scene, the report states, before he was transported to a Brownsville hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Martinez and the passenger in his vehicle were U.S. citizens, according to the report.
In a news conference Friday, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said the lack of information made public makes it “look like it was an organized cover-up of the shooting.”
Castro said he will reach out to Martinez’s family to offer his office’s support, as well as ask the Department of Justice and congressional committees to investigate.
The shooting was one of 67 reported uses of force by Homeland Security within the first two months of Trump’s term, according to emails in the records request, first reported by POLITICO.
KSAT has reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety for more information regarding its investigation.
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