Glen Burnie ICE shooting victim’s injuries not being treated, lawyers say

Seeking the release of a Baltimore man who was shot by immigration agents on Christmas Eve, attorneys wrote that authorities have been blocking his access to medical care and threatened to transfer him to an “even worse” detention facility if he let doctors remove bullet fragments from his back.

The petition filed Tuesday challenges Tiago Sousa-Martins’ ongoing detention more than two months after he received a time-served sentence for damaging government property, having admitted in a plea agreement that he backed his van into an official vehicle during the December arrest in Glen Burnie.

Despite a ruling by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May that Sousa-Martins can’t be deported pending an appeal of his removal order, the 31-year-old remains in custody at a Virginia immigration facility.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which operates the Chesapeake Detention Facility but has an agreement to hold federal pre-trial detainees, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Noting that Sousa-Martins has applied for a visa that grants temporary residency to survivors of severe human trafficking, attorneys from the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and We Are CASA say ICE has violated its own policies by keeping him detained at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green.

The habeas petition in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia says Trump administration officials have failed to provide Sousa-Martins with medication prescribed for his injuries, refused to facilitate physical therapy sessions prescribed by R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center doctors and delayed taking him to follow-up appointments. By neglecting to adequately treat his injuries, officials have rendered his ongoing detention in immigration custody “punitive,” according to his lawyers.

They alleged that ICE officers at the Baltimore holding facility presented Sousa-Martins with documents and demanded that he sign them, refusing to let him speak with a lawyer and telling him he would stay in the packed room until he signed. He thought his signature “merely meant that he entered the U.S. on December 14, 2008,” but he later found out he had signed a final order of removal and an admission to the underlying allegations.

Although doctors had set a follow-up two weeks after his release from Shock Trauma, Sousa-Martins was not taken there for another visit until more than two months later, the petition says. When asked by doctors if he’d like the remaining bullet fragments removed, prison guards “who were standing over him and refused to remove his handcuffs” said if he “had them removed, he would be transferred to an even worse facility,” his attorneys wrote.

Sousa-Martins “declined the procedure in the face of the grave risk of not having a safe recovery environment, feeling he did not really have a choice,” according to the filing.

Sousa-Martins, a citizen of Portugal, entered the U.S. in 2008 under the Visa Waiver Program for a planned “short visit” with his father in New Jersey, his attorneys wrote in the petition. The then-13-year-old had “every intent of returning to Portugal,” but his father withheld his passport and “forced him to work for minimal or no wages.”

Abused and later evicted by his father, Sousa-Martins eventually purchased a home in Baltimore, started a successful construction company and had two children, who are U.S. citizens.

The petition says the Trump administration violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to abide by ICE policies for enforcement actions against crime victims.

Sousa-Martins applied for a “T-visa,” a temporary residence and work authorization for trafficking victims, in April; ICE policy limits enforcement actions against such applicants unless there are “exceptional circumstances” such as national security concerns or an articulable risk of violence.

Anne Arundel County Police and the FBI are separately investigating the Dec. 24, 2025, shooting, during which ICE officers fired 13 rounds at Sousa-Martins, striking him at least twice.

The Department of Homeland Security initially said on social media that he attempted to flee ICE agents and “began ramming his van into several ICE vehicles” and “then drove his van directly at ICE officers, attempting to run them over.” They later walked back claims about a second man being injured after county police contradicted that narrative, and the statement of facts in Sousa-Martins’ plea agreement makes no mention of attempting to strike officers.

This article has been updated.