Cameron County Grand Jury Declines to Indict HSI Agent in Fatal Shooting of US Citizen Ruben Ray Martinez

Opening

A Cameron County grand jury returned a “no bill” on February 25, 2026, declining to indict the Homeland Security Investigations special agent (identified elsewhere in reporting as Jack Stevens) who fatally shot 23-year-old US citizen Ruben Ray Martinez at a South Padre Island traffic stop on March 15, 2025 (2025-03-15–hsi-agent-fatally-shoots-ruben-ray-martinez-south-padre-island). The decision — insufficient probable cause for criminal charges — closes the only criminal-accountability track that had been publicly confirmed as active for this killing.

What Happened / Key Facts

The grand jury proceeding was secret, and the family was not told what was presented. Martinez family attorneys said after the no-bill: “We do not know what information was presented to the grand jury in that secret proceeding.” They called the family “devastated” and demanded the Texas Rangers publicly release their investigation findings so the public could independently evaluate the shooting account.

A key witness died three days before the grand jury convened. Joshua Orta, the passenger in Martinez’s vehicle and a central witness to the shooting, was killed in a high-speed car crash on February 22, 2026 — three days before the February 25 grand jury hearing. Martinez family attorneys said it remained unclear whether Orta’s testimony, or footage reportedly showing officers “dragging Ruben onto the ground and handcuffing him immediately after shooting him three times,” was ever presented to the jurors. No source reviewed for this entry asserts a connection between Orta’s death and the grand jury timing beyond the proximity of dates; this entry records the sequence and does not allege causation.

This closes the window the body-camera footage had opened. Footage released in March 2026 — a few weeks after this no-bill — did not corroborate DHS’s claim that Martinez rammed an agent with his vehicle (see the canon entry). The grand jury decision preceded that fuller public release of contradicting video, meaning the jurors’ access to the strongest documented challenge to the official account is itself an open question.

Why This Matters

A Texas grand jury’s “no bill” is not an exoneration on the merits; it reflects what a prosecutor chose to present and what jurors found persuasive in a closed proceeding, without the public record of contradicting body-camera footage that later undermined the agency’s account. This is the only one of the three Texas ICE-shooting cases surveyed in this research pass (Martinez, Salgado Araujo, Garces Perez) where a criminal-accountability body has actually reached and closed a decision — and it closed in the agent’s favor, on a record the family’s own attorneys say they cannot evaluate.

Research Gaps

• Whether Texas Rangers’ investigative findings were ever released publicly
• Whether the grand jury saw the March 2026 body-camera footage before its February 25 vote
• Status of any DOJ federal civil-rights review (none confirmed as of this research pass, 2026-09-30)
• Status of the family’s planned wrongful-death civil suit

Related Entries

• 2025-03-15–hsi-agent-fatally-shoots-ruben-ray-martinez-south-padre-island