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The father of a U.S. Marine killed in a hit-and-run crash involving an illegal immigrant is speaking out after federal authorities arrested the man for a third time as he once again faces deportation.
Martin Martinez-Ballinas, 38, a Mexican national, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on July 22 after serving a federal prison sentence for illegally reentering the United States. He now faces his third deportation, according to federal authorities.
Federal officials said Martinez-Ballinas was convicted in connection with a 2017 crash in Maryland that killed 21-year-old U.S. Marine James Ray Walden III.
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After being deported in 2020, Martinez-Ballinas was caught attempting to illegally reenter the U.S. in Texas the following year and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. ICE removed him again in October 2022 but said he later reentered the country undetected, blaming the Biden administration’s border policies. Agents ultimately arrested him in Maryland in December 2023.
ICE took custody of Martinez-Ballinas after he completed his federal prison sentence in New Jersey.
Walden said Martinez-Ballinas was driving without a license or insurance when he crossed into his son’s lane and struck his motorcycle head-on.
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He said he later learned Maryland officials knew Martinez-Ballinas was in the country illegally and that he had been arrested five times between 2012 and 2017 but was released each time.
Walden remembered his son as an accomplished Marine and gifted intelligence analyst whose future was cut short.
“My son was 21 years old. He was just starting his life,” Walden said Friday during an appearance on The Will Cain Show. “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. His NSA boss told me that he was one of the most gifted analysts he’d ever worked with. And they were wanting him, once he got out of the Marine Corps, to come to work for them.”
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“And all that ended in the blink of an eye,” he added.
Walden pushed back on calls by some Democratic leaders to abolish ICE.
“It’s got to be one of the most insane ideas I’ve ever heard,” he said. “I cannot believe that they’re condemning our ICE agents and our DHS for actually doing their job and enforcing the laws that Congress passed.”
When asked what his message was for politicians seeking to eliminate the agency, Walden said his son’s death showed why immigration enforcement remains necessary.
“You’re never gonna understand the pain, the hole in your soul that this brings until it happens to you,” he said. “And don’t think that it can’t. It can happen to anyone at any time. My son was minding his own business. He’d gone for a ride after work, doing nothing wrong, and his life was taken.
“You can’t predict it, but you can prevent it,” he added.
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Walden credited President Donald Trump for prioritizing immigration enforcement.
“I believe that he’s probably going to go down as one of the greatest presidents in this country,” Walden said. “He stood by what he said, he said what he was going to do and he’s doing it.”
