Hit-and-Lie: An interview with Ventura County Defensa’s Leo Martinez
An ICE agent slammed into his pickup truck twice then lied to cops about it.
When ICE vehicles were spotted near an industrial area in Oxnard on the morning of Oct. 16, Leo Martinez, a key organizer with Ventura County Defensa (VC Defensa), sprang into action. He drove to the location in his Nissan pickup truck and began tracking the unmarked ICE vehicles, making sure to keep a safe distance.
After a few uneventful minutes, one of the vehicles Martinez was shadowing, a silver Jeep, began aggressively chasing Martinez, speeding up and slowing down erratically as they headed westbound on Mountain View Avenue.
“When we were going around in circles in the middle of an intersection I said, ‘Alright well lets touch on these brakes, lets see how good my brakes are right now.’ And after I brake checked them and they hit me, that got them really mad," he said. “That’s when they came in to hit me on the driver’s side.”
Soon after being rear-ended, Martinez was intentionally T-boned by the Jeep on the passenger door of the driver’s side of his truck. Martinez kept driving, fearing that if he pulled over, the immigration agents would brutalize him.
“The minute that they hit me, and I knew I was going to get arrested, I called the rest of the team,” said Martinez, a U.S. citizen. “If they’re going to drag me out of the car and beat me up, I need to have some witnesses at least.”
By then, Oxnard police had received a road rage call from an uninvolved witness who had reported that a silver Jeep had rammed a black truck, according to police records obtained by KEYT. About 10 minutes later, police received a call from an unnamed ICE agent who claimed that they began to pursue Martinez after he backed into one of their vehicles and later made a sharp turn that caused the T-bone crash. The ICE agent reported that Martinez was causing a “safety incident” and requested backup from police.
Footage of the encounter captured on Martinez's dashcam, rearview camera, and on a bystander's cellphone supports Martinez’s telling of the event and contradicts what the ICE agent reported to police.
ICE continued to follow Martinez to Oxnard Boulevard and Eighth Street, where he pulled over when he heard the sirens of Oxnard police patrol cars. A crowd of 60 to 80 people had begun to gather at the scene, according to the police records. Martinez was arrested by the immigration agents, put into an unmarked white SUV, and taken to a federal immigration detention center in Downtown Los Angeles. Within hours, he was released and met with community members and fellow activists who had been rallying outside the federal building.
“What we learned from this experience is that ICE agents lie to police officers, so now we have dashcams in our cars that record everything. All of our patrollers have a dashcam,” Martinez added.
Federal immigration agents have repeatedly been caught making false claims to police and in court filings. Martinez says he was told by authorities he was being released from the detention center pending charges but was not told the nature of those charges.
Organizers with VC Defensa, an immigrant rights advocacy group, continue to patrol their neighborhoods on the lookout for ICE vehicles. Once spotted, they, alert the surrounding community of ICE’s presence using a bullhorn or a whistle.
“In this county, we’ve been able to change how ICE operates fundamentally,” said Martinez.
The work that VC Defensa is doing draws on a rich history of organizing in the region. Oxnard is long celebrated for its agricultural heritage and its history of labor organizing, including the 1903 Japanese-Mexican Labor Association, the 1933 Betabelero (sugar beet workers) Strike, the 1974 United Farm Workers strawberry and celery strike for better wages, and the 1994 UFW protest at Dole’s office over unfair labor practices. Now, this region is stepping up to protect its immigrant community in the face of ICE's roving snatch squads.
Martinez compliments VC Defensa for how quickly they were able to mobilize to his defense during his arrest and detainment, “This is a testament to all the work we’ve done for months.”
If you wish to volunteer for VC Defensa, you can fill out their intake form here. Additional reporting by Kevin Flores.
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👋 Goodbye to 2025!
It has been a long year for us at The Southlander and probably you too. We have been working behind the scenes to build this organization from the ground up. From filing incorporation documents and creating org policies to applying for grants and working to obtain media liability insurance, the folks at the Southlander have been putting in countless hours to help make this a reality. We have been out at local events and speaking at conferences to try and share our vision for the investigative newsroom that we feel the residents of the Greater LA area need and deserve.
And so we want to thank everyone that has joined us over this past year that shares that vision. We want to thank Report of America and Tiny News Collective for providing guidance in some key areas of establishing this organization.
And this is only the beginning. All the work that we have done this year has laid the foundation for what we will be able to do in 2026. We have so many things that we cannot wait to bring you in the new year: investigations that have been cooking for months, interviews with people impacted by ICE raids, and a podcast on the complexity and cruelty of immigration detention. Until then, we want to leave 2025 sharing some interviews from this year.
Kevin Flores
Abraham Márquez
The Southlander
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