A 38-year-old Mexican national who killed a 21-year-old U.S. Marine in a 2017 hit-and-run in Maryland is in ICE custody again after entering the country illegally for the third time, and the agency blames Biden-era border policies for letting it happen.
Martin Martinez-Ballinas sat in a federal prison cell at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took custody of him on July 22. He had been serving a 37-month sentence for illegally re-entering the United States, a country that had already deported him twice. Now he faces a third removal, Just the News reported.
The case has drawn renewed attention because of what Martinez-Ballinas did before his first deportation. In 2017, he was convicted of an automotive hit-and-run offense in Maryland that resulted in the death of James Ray Walden III, a Marine who worked in intelligence and served as a crypto analyst for the National Security Agency. Walden was 21 years old.
His father, James Walden Jr., described the circumstances on Fox News' "The Will Cain Show." Martinez-Ballinas was driving without a license or insurance, crossed into oncoming traffic, and struck the young Marine's motorcycle head-on.
"My son was minding his own business. He'd gone for a ride after work, doing nothing wrong, and his life was taken."
Martinez-Ballinas served three years for that offense. Three years for a life.
The system had multiple chances to prevent Walden's death. Between 2012 and 2017, Maryland officials arrested Martinez-Ballinas five separate times. Each time, authorities knew he was in the country illegally. Each time, the New York Post reported, they released him.
That pattern, local officials aware of an illegal immigrant's status but unwilling or unable to act on it, is not unique to Maryland. Across the country, local officials have actively obstructed ICE enforcement, and sanctuary policies have shielded illegal immigrants from federal detention even after repeated encounters with law enforcement.
After his release from prison for the hit-and-run conviction, Martinez-Ballinas was deported in 2020. That should have been the end of the story. It was not.
In 2021, authorities caught Martinez-Ballinas attempting to cross back into the United States illegally. A federal court sentenced him to 15 months in prison for unlawful entry. He was deported again in October 2022.
By 2023, he was back. Martinez-Ballinas re-entered the country undetected, and when caught, a federal court sentenced him to 37 months in federal prison plus one year of supervised release. A Department of Justice press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Maryland confirmed the sentencing.
ICE blamed Biden administration border policies for Martinez-Ballinas' ability to cross into the country a third time. The agency did not specify which policies it held responsible, but the timeline is plain: his third illegal entry occurred in 2023, during the Biden presidency, after two prior deportations had failed to keep him out.
The broader failure of deportation as a permanent solution is a question the case forces into the open. Legal battles over sanctuary city policies have complicated federal enforcement for years, and the political will to secure the border has varied sharply between administrations.
Walden Jr. has used his son's death to advocate for stronger immigration enforcement. He credited President Trump for prioritizing the issue and pushed back against political figures who have called for abolishing ICE.
He also framed the broader argument in terms any parent could understand:
"You can't predict it, but you can prevent it."
Arthur J. Wilson Jr., the acting field office director for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in Newark, issued a statement that left no room for ambiguity about the agency's view of the case:
"Martinez-Ballinas repeatedly and flagrantly disregarded the laws of the United States and faces deportation for the third time. His conviction for an automotive offense that resulted in the tragic loss of a U.S. Marine in 2017 demonstrates a complete lack of respect for human life and our legal system. Anyone who believes violations of U.S. immigration law are trivial or inconsequential should take note: Federal offenses carry serious consequences, and we will continue to enforce the law to protect our communities and honor those who serve our nation."
Wilson's statement reads as a direct challenge to the political faction that spent years treating immigration enforcement as optional, or worse, as something to be actively undermined.
Martinez-Ballinas' case is not an isolated action. It falls under the Trump administration's Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative aimed at removing illegal immigrants and dismantling cartels and transnational criminal organizations. The pace of ICE arrests has accelerated sharply under the program.
In a single week, July 24 through July 30, the Southern District of Texas alone charged 263 people with immigration and border security crimes. Of those, 227 were illegal immigrants, according to a DOJ press release.
Separately, the initiative also netted Lopez Munongo Makengo, a 36-year-old native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo living in Sioux City, Iowa. Makengo won a spot in the Diversity Visa lottery, a program that makes up to 55,000 permanent resident green cards available annually through random selection, but was convicted of unlawful possession and use of identification documents. Investigators found he had lied on his lottery application by failing to disclose that he had a child, despite swearing under oath that his statements were true. He faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and up to three years of supervised release.
Cases like Makengo's raise a different but related concern: the integrity of legal immigration pathways. When fraud goes undetected in a system built on random selection and self-reported information, the program's credibility erodes, and lawful applicants who play by the rules pay the price. The Trump administration has also stepped up deportations of convicted criminals across multiple nationalities.
James Ray Walden III was 21 when he died. He had joined the Marine Corps, earned a role in intelligence, and worked for the NSA. His father described him on Fox News as "basically Jimmy Spide with a computer", a young man at the start of a career built around protecting his country.
The man who killed him served three years, was deported, came back, was deported again, and came back again. At every stage, the system either failed to hold him or failed to keep him out. Maryland released him five times before the fatal crash. Federal prison and deportation failed to deter him twice after it.
ICE now holds Martinez-Ballinas at Fort Dix, pending his third deportation. Whether that removal sticks depends on whether the border is actually enforced, a question that, for the Walden family, stopped being abstract nine years ago. Political leaders who spent years shielding illegal immigrants from deportation owe families like the Waldens an answer for the consequences.
A country that cannot keep a convicted killer from walking back across its border three times is not enforcing its laws. It is performing them.
