CHICAGO — Shortly after his arrest in early October, Little Village construction worker Juan Espinoza Martinez was led by three federal agents into a windowless interview room, still dressed in a green work T-shirt and carrying a small bottle of water.

“You’re probably a little confused about what’s going on today, so I’m gonna try to explain it all to you,” Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Christopher Perugini told Espinoza Martinez at the outset of the Oct. 6 videotaped interview, which was played for a federal jury Wednesday. “Feel free to ask me any questions you want.”

Then, the agents laid it on Espinoza Martinez, a 37-year-old father of three, why he was there.

“Murder for hire?” Espinoza responded, holding up his hands questioningly.

“Correct, so that’s what the charge you’re charged with,” Perugini said. “I’ll explain it to you as we’re going.”

The agents then confronted Espinoza Martinez with text messages he’d sent an acquaintance that included a photo of Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, who was then the face of Operation Midway Blitz, along with what agents characterized as cash bounties for Bovino’s kidnapping and murder.

Over the course of the interview, the agents pressed Espinoza Martinez repeatedly on how he thought the messages looked. He said over and over he meant nothing by it, that they were nothing more than social media chatter, and that he had no intention of making any actual offer for Bovino’s killing.

“I’m really confused about this,” Espinoza said at one point in the interview. “I have no gang affiliation…I’m not nowhere around there. I work for a living every day. I’m a union worker. I work concrete, so I don’t know.”

Portions of the videotaped interview were played for jurors in court Wednesday as the trial of Espinoza Martinez got underway before U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow.

Espinoza Martinez, who has lived in Chicago for years but is not a U.S. citizen, is charged in an indictment with a single count of solicitation of murder for hire, which carries up to 10 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, Espinoza Martinez told an acquaintance from the construction business, Adrian Jimenez, after an immigration agent shot a woman in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood on Oct. 4 “that he had dispatched members of the Latin Kings” to the area of 39th Street and Kedzie Avenue in response to the shooting.

Jimenez, who had worked as a government informant on and off for years, called up Homeland Security and shared the Snapchat messages that Espinoza Martinez had sent him saying, “2k on information when you get him” and “10k if u take him down,” along with Bovino’s photo, according to prosecutors.

In his opening statement to the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Minje Shin said the case was not about someone charged with “expressing strong, even angry, views about immigration enforcement policy.” or a hatred of Bovino.

“Make no mistake– the evidence in this case will show that what the defendant did was not a joke, not just mouthing off, not just him blowing off steam behind a keyboard, not political discourse… what the defendant did was a solicitation of murder,” Shin said.

Shin said Espinoza Martinez was “fixated” on Bovino, who was “the face of the threat” to arrest, detain, and deport members of his community in Little Village, a threat that “hit close to home.”

Espinoza Martinez’s attorney, Jonathan Bedi, told the jurors in his opening remarks that the case was “riddled” with reasonable doubt because “the government cannot point to anything that shows Juan’s intent.”

“When you cut through all of their words…all they have is their guesses and speculation,” Bedi said. “They are guessing.”

Bedi says there were no bags of money, no follow up, no recordings, no discussion of any plans. No location scouting, no escape route, no surveillance, no communication saying “Bovino’s here now would be a good time to act.”

“Repeating neighborhood gossip is not a federal crime,” he said.

Before the Espinoza Martinez’s taped interview was played, jurors heard testimony from the informant, Jimenez, who walked slowly into court with a pronounced limp from a back issue he’s been suffering.

Dressed in a blue suit, with a salt-and-pepper beard, Jimenez said he’s been in construction for decades and recently started his own construction business. He also was convicted in 2000 of a felony and spent several years in prison.

Though the jury did not hear details of that case, court records show Jimenez’s conviction was for an armed robbery and home invasion in Franklin Park that was charged in 2000. He was later sentenced to six years behind bars.

Jimenez told the jury he’s known Espinoza Martinez for “less than a year.” The defendant first reached out to him on Snapchat, looking for construction work, he said.

Jimenez testified he took photos of the Snapchat messages received from Espinoza Martinez on Oct. 2 and “almost immediately” contacted agents with HSI about them.

Jimenez testifies he had conversations about immigration with Espinoza Martinez “more than a few times.”

But when Shin attempted to ask what they talked about specifically, the defense repeatedly objected and the judge sustained it.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Dena Singer asked Jimenez a series of questions: You have a family, right? You work? You want to continue working and you want to continue staying in the U.S.? And you take care of your kids?

Jimenez answered “Yes” to all of them.

“And you’re not somebody who commits murder-for-hire, right?” Singer asked,

“No,” Jimenez said.

Singer also got Jimenez to acknowledge that Espinoza Martinez never asked him to take any action against Bovino or share the message with any wider audience.

Did he ever say “Here’s where Bovino is going to be next?” Singer asked.

“No,” Jimenez replied.

“Did he ever say “Here’s a picture of cash,” or “I have someone who can pay you all this cash?'”

Jimenez said he had not.

Espinoza Martinez’s trial is the first criminal case to stem from Operation Midway Blitz to go to trial.

Though limited in scope, the case is expected to offer an important litmus test as immigration-enforcement operations continue to roil Chicago and other Democrat-led cities long targeted by President Donald Trump, including Minneapolis, where the killing of a U.S. citizen by an immigration agent earlier this month has sparked nationwide protests.

The case was held up by top Department of Homeland Security officials as an example of the violence and threats immigration agents were facing from gang members and even international drug cartels.

In the months since, however, evidence of Espinoza Martinez’s supposed gang affiliations has not materialized. Prosecutors vastly toned down that aspect of the case, first dropping mention of gang affiliation in the indictment handed up by a grand jury, then saying in a pretrial hearing they only intended to prove Espinoza Martinez had an “affinity” for the Latin Kings.

On Tuesday, the defense objected to prosecutors introducing a text string where Espinoza Martinez told an unidentified contact: “It’s going down bro my guys are ready in the vill (Little Village). Saints sd and 2Six being bitches. Kings on they ass n they scared.”

Prosecutors argued the conversation showed Espinoza Martinez was disappointed other gangs weren’t fighting back.

But Lefkow sided partially with the defense, saying the comments on Little Village can be shown to the jury, but not the references to the Latin Saints or Two-Six gangs.

She also excluded later text by Espinoza Martinez about “Chapo” having the Latin Kings’ back — a reference to former Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

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