Feds charge man shot by ICE agents in Glen Burnie with resisting arrest

Federal authorities offered the most comprehensive account yet of the Christmas Eve shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Glen Burnie in court documents that charge the man who was shot with resisting arrest.

The man, Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, a Portuguese immigrant who overstayed his visa, suffered a collapsed lung after being shot in the left thigh and upper right part of his back, FBI agent Sean O’Rourke wrote in an affidavit supporting the criminal charges.

According to O’Rourke, ICE agents were “performing field operations” in the parking lot of Lowe’s in Glen Burnie when they saw a white work van, ran the tags and determined the vehicle was registered to Sousa-Martins.

Immigration agents followed Sousa-Martins to a residential community on West Court, O’Rourke wrote. After they boxed his van in with their vehicles, O’Rourke added, the agents approached Sousa-Martins to determine his immigration status.

According to the affidavit, the encounter quickly escalated, with immigration agents smashing Sousa-Martins’ window and Sousa-Martins attempting to flee down a narrow path between condominiums. It culminated with three agents shooting Sousa-Martins before his van crashed into a tree behind the homes.

Sousa-Martins is charged with two federal crimes: resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering with officers, and damaging government property.

The Maryland Federal Public Defender’s office, which is representing Sousa-Martins, did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

The charges arrive amid increased scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement push following ICE’s fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Federal authorities offered similar justifications for the shootings in Glen Burnie, Minneapolis and, later, Portland, Oregon. They said the people they shot had weaponized their vehicles and forced agents to fire defensively. Law enforcement has long turned to that justification for shooting motorists, according to The New York Times.

Local officials across the country have been highly critical of the tactics employed during Trump’s immigration sweeps, accusing federal agents of profiling residents and escalating encounters with them.

In the shootings in Glen Burnie, Portland and Minneapolis, immigration agents are said to have approached vehicles that were on and occupied by a driver. Former ICE officials and policing experts interviewed by The Banner said that law enforcement officers have long been trained to exercise caution when approaching moving vehicles and to avoid standing in such a vehicle’s path. One of the ICE agents in Minnesota stood in front of Good’s car.

After being shot in Glen Burnie, Sousa-Martins told O’Rourke he was in the area to perform electrical work when “a dark vehicle with flashing lights pulled in behind him and an unidentified male approached from the rear, yelling, ‘We’ve run your tags, we know you’re an overstay — we’re going to break the glass’ in Spanish,” the FBI agent wrote.

According to the affidavit, Sousa-Martins described the agents as angry and “at a 10.”

When the immigration officers ordered Sousa-Martins out of the van, he repeatedly refused, saying, “Why are you doing this? I’m a U.S. citizen,” and, “No, I’m not coming out,” O’Rourke wrote.

Sousa-Martins later told O’Rourke that he came to the United States in 2008 to visit his father, who told him at the end of his stay that Sousa-Martins was “not going back” to Europe, according to the affidavit. He spent his adolescence in Newark, New Jersey, before coming to Baltimore, where he purchased a house and began the process of becoming an American citizen.

On the residential court in Glen Burnie, agents used a tool to shatter the driver’s side window of Sousa-Martins’ van and tried to drag him out of the vehicle, O’Rourke wrote. At that point, Sousa-Martins issued an expletive and placed his van in drive.

According to the affidavit, agents struggled for the gearshift. The immigration officers told O’Rourke that Sousa-Martins rammed his van into their vehicles, one of which was carrying a Salvadoran immigrant who was already in ICE custody. Officials previously said Salomon Antonio Serrano-Esquivel suffered whiplash.

Shortly after agents shattered his window, Sousa-Martins noticed a walkway between two groups of condos and attempted to drive for it, he told O’Rourke. According to the FBI agent’s affidavit, that’s when the immigration officers opened fire. Sousa-Martins told O’Rourke he didn’t realize he had been shot until shortly before his van crashed into the tree.

ICE originally said Serrano-Esquivel, a native of El Salvador who was in the United States illegally, was a passenger in Sousa-Martins’ van and suffered whiplash during the encounter.

Photos that the agency posted online showed a bullet hole in the passenger’s side of the crashed van. Anne Arundel County police, the first agency to provide information about the shooting, said that day that the second injured person was outside the van.

The Banner reported that an attorney for Serrano-Esquivel said he was in fact arrested hours before the shooting — and hours away — in Southern Maryland. The Salvadoran was injured when the ICE vehicle he was detained in crashed and he couldn’t brace himself because his hands were cuffed, the attorney said.

Only after Anne Arundel police confirmed The Banner’s reporting on Jan. 9 and publicly disputed that part of ICE’s account did the federal agency change its story about the violent encounter.

O’Rourke’s affidavit confirmed Serrano-Esquivel was in ICE custody at the time of the shooting. In court documents, Serrano-Esquivel is referred to as “Detainee-1.”

Serrano-Esquivel told O’Rourke the agents spent “an hour of driving around to various public locations” in a “caravan” made up of six ICE vehicles, one of which carried him, before they arrived at the Lowe’s in Glen Burnie.

A policing expert previously told The Banner that driving around looking for more people to arrest with someone already detained in the back conflicts with commonly accepted law enforcement practice. The expert said doing so increases the risk of injury for the detained person and could give them opportunities to escape.

The immigration agents stayed in the parking lot for about 10 minutes before following a work van to a nearby neighborhood and surrounding it in a parking area, Serrano-Esquivel told O’Rourke. According to the affidavit, Serrano-Esquivel recalled the agents, part of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, asking the van’s driver about his immigration status.

“Detainee-1 further stated that following the breaking of the glass, the driver of the Subject Vehicle reversed into the ERO vehicle that was parked directly in front of the ERO vehicle that Detainee-1 was seated in,” O’Rourke wrote. “The Subject Vehicle then drove forward, a short distance before backing into the ERO vehicles again. According to Detainee-1, the Subject Vehicle then drove forward.”

Serrano-Esquivel told O’Rourke he then heard gunfire.

This article has been updated. Banner reporter Sara Ruberg contributed to this story.