CHICAGO — A federal jury on Thursday acquitted a man accused of placing a $10,000 bounty on the head of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino last fall as the Trump administration ramped up its immigration enforcement campaign across the Chicago area.
The case of Juan Espinoza Martinez, who has spent more than three months in jail since his Oct. 6 arrest, marks the feds' first trial attempt on charges stemming from “Operation Midway Blitz.” In charging documents, Espinoza Martinez was accused of being a “high-ranking member” of the Latin Kings, a prominent Chicago street gang.
Read more: DOJ lawyer says it’s ‘wrong to allege’ Operation Midway Blitz is over
Those claims were repeated by Trump administration officials to bolster their argument that immigration agents were under attack in Chicago and needed protection from the National Guard.
After federalizing approximately 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and importing around 200 guardsmen from Texas, the National Guard was only stationed outside a federal immigration processing center for one day in October before a judge blocked their further deployment — a ruling backed up by the U.S. Supreme Court last month.
Read more: Supreme Court rebuffs Trump’s planned National Guard deployment to Chicago
Espinoza Martinez’s lawyers argued during a two-day trial that their client was in no way a member of the Latin Kings. Testifying in his brother’s defense, Oscar Espinoza described Espinoza Martinez as a “union carpenter” who “has three kids.”
“He’s always with his kids,” Espinoza told the jury. “After work, he goes home to his wife.”
Espinoza was the recipient of some of the Snapchat messages at issue in the case. In an exchange shown to the jury, Espinoza Martinez sent his brother a message featuring a screenshot photo of Bovino from a Chicago Tribune article and the words “10k for his head...dead or alive."
In response, Espinoza wrote back: “Not worth 10k.”
Espinoza Martinez indicated that information about Bovino’s whereabouts could be worth anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000.
“They want to get him in the vill,” he wrote, which prosecutors said was short for Little Village, the Mexican immigrant-heavy neighborhood on Chicago’s South West Side where Espinoza Martinez lived.
But defense attorney Jonathan Bedi told the jury during his opening statements Wednesday that what prosecutors were about to show in the messages were nothing more than Espinoza Martinez “re-sharing neighborhood gossip.”
“Repeating neighborhood gossip is not trying to commit a murder,” Bedi said.
He also asked Espinoza whether he’d be someone his brother would seek out in a murder-for-hire plot.
“Do you kill people for money?” he asked, to which Espinoza answered, “No.”
Espinoza Martinez sent similar messages to Adrian Jiminez, a loose acquaintance who had hired him for several construction projects since the two were connected via Snapchat about a year ago. Jiminez, the government’s star witness, testified Wednesday that he’d acted as a government informant on multiple occasions in the last three decades.
When Espinoza Martinez sent Jiminez messages about Bovino on Oct. 2, Jiminez took photos of them with his other phone so Espinoza Martinez wouldn’t be notified that he’d taken a screenshot, and immediately contacted a federal agent with Homeland Security Investigations.
The messages also relayed the same information about $2,000 for information on Bovino’s whereabouts and “10k if u take him down.”
“LK on him,” one message said, interspersed with three hand emojis that Jiminez testified he believed were an approximation of the Latin Kings’ gang signs.
But on cross-examination from defense attorney Dena Singer, Jiminez denied that he’d ever be “somebody who commits murders for hire.”
“You’re not someone who commits crimes at all,” Singer asked Jiminez after noting the Mexico native has only achieved permanent residency status in the last decade, which would be jeopardized by any criminal activity.
“No,” Jiminez answered.
In a videotaped Oct. 6 interview shown to the jury Wednesday, Espinoza Martinez confirmed to federal agents that “LK” stood for Latin Kings. Asked how he would know about what the Latin Kings were up to, Espinoza Martinez indicated it was easy to glean information in his neighborhood.
“Because I hear the talks,” he said. “I mean, they are talking right there.”
When agents asked why he was sharing the information, Espinoza Martinez said he was just generally “worried for my family” and was “just writing down information like, ‘this is what’s going on.’”
“I know how this looks,” he told the agents before giving them permission to search his phone. "I made a mistake.”
At another point in the interview, Espinoza Martinez flat-out denied he had any ties to the Latin Kings.
“I want to be honest ... I’m really confused about this,” he said. “I have no gang affiliation. I’m not nowhere around there. I work for a living every day. I’m a union worker. I work concrete.”
Still, prosecutors claimed Espinoza Martinez’s messages were enough to prove intent, asking Jiminez and Espinoza whether the defendant had said his messages were meant as a joke or as “just an FYI,” as Assistant U.S. Attorney Minje Shin put it.
After hearing closing arguments in the case Thursday morning, the jury deliberated for about three hours before returning its not guilty verdict in the late afternoon.
Though Espinoza Martinez was acquitted, he’s still not legally in the clear as his case pointed immigration officials to his undocumented status; he told agents during the Oct. 6 interview that was brought to the U.S. from Mexico as a toddler.
In a post on X Thursday evening, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy, responded to news of Espinoza Martinez’s acquittal by accusing “leftist judges and juries” of “empowering violent insurrection against the government.”
The underlying post pointed out that nearly half of those who’ve been charged with non-immigration crimes stemming from Operation Midway Blitz have been cleared.
In the fall, prosecutors saw a spate of cases fall apart, including a handful in which protesters were charged with impeding immigration agents from doing their jobs. Prosecutors in several cases asked judges to dismiss charges after litigation repeatedly revealed evidence contradicting the Department of Homeland Security’s claims about incidents between agents and members of the public.
Most notably, prosecutors in November dropped assault charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was accused of having boxed in immigration agents with her car before a Border Patrol agent shot her five times. Martinez had been following and filming agents.
Riot control weapons case dismissed
Meanwhile on Thursday, a federal judge granted the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing immigration agents of wrongfully using force — including riot control weapons like tear gas — against protesters this fall during “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Protesters, clergy and journalists won protections against agents’ use of force this fall after U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis twice restricted agents from deploying tear gas, pepper balls, flashbang grenades and other weapons unless someone posed an immediate risk. Even then, agents were supposed to give the public two clear warnings before using force.
But less than three weeks after Ellis ordered semi-permanent restrictions against immigration agents in November, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed her order, saying it “impermissibly” infringed on how the executive branch conducts law enforcement activity.
Read more: 7th Circuit stays judge’s order restricting immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons | Restrictions on federal immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons extended indefinitely
Instead of fighting the appellate panel’s ruling, plaintiffs opted to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit, avoiding the specter of losing on appeal. In a hearing earlier this month, Ellis expressed some skepticism about the wisdom of that maneuver, citing the fatal shooting of motorist Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
But the hundreds of hours Ellis and her staff spent watching footage from Operation Midway Blitz will not go to waste; the judge last week granted a motion to reassign a similar case to her own docket in the interest of “judicial economy.”
Ellis will oversee a high-profile case filed Jan. 12 by the state of Illinois and city of Chicago accusing the Trump administration of an illegal federal “occupation” of a sovereign state, unleashing an “organized bombardment” to coerce change in state and local immigration policies.
Read more: Lawsuit puts Illinois on offensive against ‘menacing’ immigration raids
“Having the court also consider the issues raised by the state and city … will result in saving of substantial time and effort,” the judge said in a hearing on reassigning the case to herself last week. “In other words, the court is already up to speed on many of the facts and issues that will arise in this case and having another judge try to get up to speed will be inefficient.”
At several times over the course of litigation in the riot control weapons case this fall, Ellis noted her belief that the Trump administration, especially Bovino, had lied about the tenor of protests of immigration enforcement actions in order to justify using force against demonstrators.
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