The father of a U.S. Marine killed in a Maryland hit-and-run crash is speaking out after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested the man convicted in his son's death for a third time as he again faces deportation. Martin Martinez-Ballinas, 38, a Mexican national, was arrested by ICE on July 22 after completing a federal prison sentence for illegally reentering the United States.
Federal officials stated that Martinez-Ballinas was convicted in connection with a 2017 crash that killed 21-year-old U.S. Marine James Ray Walden III. Martinez-Ballinas was driving without a license or insurance when he crossed into his son's lane and struck his motorcycle head-on, according to James Walden Jr., the Marine's father.
According to federal authorities, Martinez-Ballinas was deported in 2020 but was apprehended attempting to illegally reenter the U.S. in Texas the following year and received a 15-month prison sentence. ICE removed him again in October 2022, but he is believed to have reentered the country undetected. Agents arrested him in Maryland in December 2023 after he completed his federal prison sentence in New Jersey.
Walden shared that Maryland officials were aware Martinez-Ballinas was in the country illegally and had been arrested five times between 2012 and 2017, but was released each time. He remembered his son as an accomplished Marine and gifted intelligence analyst whose life was cut short. "My son was 21 years old. He was just starting his life," Walden said. "He was in the Marine Corps. He worked for Intel. He worked for the National Security Agency as a crypto-analyst, basically Jimmy Spide with a computer. He was extremely good at what he did." Walden's son's boss at the NSA informed him that his son was one of the most gifted analysts he had ever worked with and that they wanted him to work for them after his Marine Corps service.
Walden pushed back against calls by some Democratic leaders to abolish ICE, calling it "one of the most insane ideas I've ever heard." He stated that his son's death underscored the necessity of immigration enforcement. "You're never gonna understand the pain, the hole in your soul that this brings until it happens to you," Walden said. "My son was minding his own business. He'd gone for a ride after work, doing nothing wrong, and his life was taken."
Walden credited former President Donald Trump for prioritizing immigration enforcement, stating, "He stood by what he said, he said what he was going to do and he's doing it."