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The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.
On Tuesday, Christopher Martinez Marvan was on his way home during his lunch break. The 31-year-old citizen of Mexico had lived in Helena on and off since 2008, when his parents first brought him into the United States under unknown circumstances. His family had since expanded to include a wife and four children, whom he had been supporting with his wages from hotel maintenance work.
Also on Tuesday, officers from the Helena Police Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations were trying to arrest a different man — Anderson DeJesus Bastidas Linares — subject to an active criminal warrant. When law enforcement saw Martinez Marvan driving in the area they were targeting, HPD followed him. Officers determined that his vehicle registration had expired and pulled him over.
Speaking to local reporters and residents later that day, Helena Police Chief Brett Petty and Lieutenant Adam Shanks said police officers soon realized Martinez Marvan was not the man they were looking for. They said they planned to write him a citation for the traffic violation and let him leave. Instead, the situation escalated.
“Border Patrol and HSI federal officers advised that the male that we had pulled over actually had a federal detainer, and they were going to take custody of him,” Shanks said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, did not provide answers to Montana Free Press questions emailed Wednesday about Martinez Marvan’s immigration status, criminal history or lack thereof, or current whereabouts, but provided a short statement in response to his detention.
“ICE is focused on public safety and national security threats first and foremost. However, any individual illegally present in the United States who is encountered during an immigration enforcement operation may be taken into custody and processed for removal as stated by law,” the agency said.
The traffic stop took place on one of Helena’s busiest streets. Witnesses driving by texted friends. One message, later shared with MTFP, described a “brown man being taken by people in vests to a brown vehicle” bearing no obvious law enforcement logos or identification. Concerned locals soon found out that Martinez Marvan had been taken to the Lewis and Clark County Detention Center near downtown Helena, despite the county not having an agreement with federal authorities to hold detained immigrants.
As word spread, some Helena residents appealed to local attorneys for help. Others got in touch with Martinez Marvan’s wife and learned that he is a father of four young children. Community members gathered that he did not appear to have a criminal record or be a known threat to community safety. A small gaggle of people showed up on Tuesday outside the county detention center to demand information from officials and call for Martinez Marvan’s release.
Before long, Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins had met with the city police department’s top brass to try to smooth over community concerns. Upon leaving law enforcement offices at the downtown Law and Justice Center that afternoon, Collins addressed the group outside and confirmed that HPD had pulled over the wrong person.
“You know, it’s sad. It’s someone with a family. But what do you do?” Collins told MTFP. “Times have changed.”
Accounts of immigrant detentions, many of them high-profile, have surged across the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year. Trump promised to launch “the largest deportation effort in American history,” in part by targeting violent criminal offenders. But national data and analyses show the administration is falling short of its stated removal goals, and increasingly arresting people with no criminal history.
Montana, with roughly 1.1 million residents, has seen far fewer detentions and deportations than other states. And recent arrests carried out by federal authorities have received less community blowback. In late June, a regional HSI office announced on X that federal authorities in Helena had arrested Erick Sanchez-Banegas, whom they identified as an illegal immigrant from Honduras. Also in June, federal agents in Kalispell reported arresting Baldermar Duarte-Nieto, a Mexican immigrant HSI said had a felony drug warrant in Washington state.
But the circumstances surrounding Martinez Marvan’s arrest struck a chord. Outraged local residents accused the Helena police department of racial profiling and demanded an investigation into how and why Lewis and Clark County officials collaborated with ICE. More than 30 people testified about the series of events at the Lewis and Clark County Commission meeting on Thursday, raising particular concern about detention center officials reportedly prohibiting Martinez Marvan’s attorneys from speaking with him before he was transferred out of the detention center Tuesday evening.
“It’s a big problem, right? Forget the type of proceeding we’re talking about here. Whether it’s immigration or criminal, people have a right to access their counsel. And Lewis and Clark County pretty clearly prevented that and has acknowledged that they did,” Andres Haladay, one of the attorneys representing Martinez Marvan, told MTFP. “It’s pretty upsetting.”
A hearing in Martinez Marvan’s case is scheduled for July 10 in federal district court in Missoula. Until then, his family, friends and attorneys say they intend to keep advocating for legal due process. None of his supporters had spoken to him as of Thursday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters shortly after his arrest, Martinez Marvan’s wife, Maria Pacheco, described her husband as a good father striving to take care of his family.
“He doesn’t have any warrants out there for him. Everything that he has done, like a small ticket that we have gotten, he always pays everything. He makes sure that we’re not in debt,” Pacheco said. “I don’t think it’s fair for what happened right now.”
Pacheco, a U.S. citizen, said Martinez Marvan had previously applied for citizenship but had been denied, describing the situation as “complicated.” She said the family has since considered moving to Mexico, but decided against it out of concern for the safety of their three daughters, the oldest of whom is 11 years old.
In the weeks leading up to her husband’s arrest, Pacheco said, the family had been afraid to go out in public more than absolutely necessary. They decided to take the kids to the lake on Monday and got pulled over for allegedly speeding, Pacheco said. That time, they were let off with a citation. She said it hurts to know that Martinez Marvan’s second encounter with police this week was “a mistake.”
“It’s something really scary, because you think that you’re fine, you think everything is going to be OK, and it’s not,” she said on Tuesday, as her one-year-old baby cried and squirmed in her arms. “Everybody’s scared. That’s not fair.”
—Mara Silvers
“War Department” sends bull rider Connor Murnion, of Jordan, airborne at the Augusta American Legion Rodeo on June 29. Credit: Ryan Hollow
“We are working to support and provide aid to our neighbors in Idaho — of course the priority of which is for the families of the firefighters and the firefighter still recovering from his injuries … There is a long road ahead and we will be there for the fire families in every way we can.”
—Montana Professional Firefighters union President George Richards, in the aftermath of an armed ambush that left two first responders dead and one critically injured in Idaho last weekend.
As of Tuesday, the expansive constitutional abortion rights initiative Montana voters passed by a broad margin last fall has officially become part of the state’s foundational legal document.
Article II, Section 36 of the Montana Constitution now features the “Right to Make Decisions About Pregnancy” — a framework that describes how and when the government can regulate abortion. In a nutshell:
Montana voters passed Constitutional Initiative 128 by 16 percentage points in November over vehement opposition from anti-abortion activists and conservative Christian political groups. Voters elected anti-abortion Republican officials up and down the ballot, including freshman U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, in the same election.
The amendment faced an eleventh-hour legal challenge from some of the same forces that tried to block its passage at the polls. In late June, staff from the Montana Family Foundation’s political action group, the Montana Life Defense Fund, and two plaintiffs said the initiative should not take effect on July 1 because Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen hadn’t published the entire text of the amendment on the ballot and in other voter education materials.
The lawsuit alleged that constitutional initiatives in Montana have for decades fallen short of that requirement, but asked the Montana Supreme Court to declare only CI-128 null and void.
A five-justice panel of the state’s high court on Tuesday unanimously decided not to accept the Montana Life Defense Fund’s case (special requirements must be met in order for a lawsuit to go directly to the Montana Supreme Court rather than beginning in state district court). In the ruling written by Chief Justice Cory Swanson, the court found that there is not sufficient urgency to pause the amendment’s implementation before the July 1 effective date.
“In this case, the Defense Fund alleges urgency or emergency factors exist in this
case because ‘CI-128 will be effective July 1, 2025, and if enacted will eliminate all
regulation of abortion up to the moment of birth.’ However, the actions the Defense Fund complains of occurred on November 5, 2024. Any urgency or emergency that exists is entirely of the Defense Fund’s own making, because it waited seven months to file this petition. We have repeatedly warned parties they cannot manufacture an emergency due to lack of diligence,” the court wrote.
The ruling additionally noted the myriad ways in which Jacobsen complied with state law in making the initiative’s text available to voters.
“Declarations of two election-day registrants who were, for unexplained reasons, unable to avail themselves of the pre-election newspaper publications, the Secretary of State website, the statutorily mandated copies of the [Voter Information Pamphlet] available at every precinct on Election Day, and possibly other methods of dissemination not mentioned in this Order, do not provide adequate factual support for the Defense Fund’s assertion that election-day registrants were denied ‘the right to know what they were voting for or against’ because the full text of the initiative was not printed on the ballot itself,” the ruling said.
Derek Oestreicher, the Montana Family Foundation’s chief legal counsel, indicated in a Tuesday statement that the group will pursue other legal avenues.
“The Montana Supreme Court has unfortunately chosen not to weigh in on this case at the outset,” Oestreicher said. “We remain confident in the strength of our arguments and will now proceed at the district court level. While today’s decision is a setback in timing, it is not the end of the road. This is justice delayed — not justice denied.”
—Mara Silvers
In other news this week —
President Trump’s trillion-dollar tax-break-and-spending-cut bill passed its final vote in Congress. All four members of Montana’s congressional delegation supported it.
As the Trump administration looks to cut federal spending, tribal colleges in Montana are on the chopping block.
With Gov. Greg Gianforte done issuing signatures and vetoes on bills passed by the 2025 Legislature, it’s now clear which lawmakers had the most — and least — success passing bills this year.
Drought conditions again have Flathead Lake’s summer water level subject to a contentious tug-of-war.
Wildland firefighting work is tough on the body. It’s increasingly clear that it’s also tough on the mind.
It’s been an especially gratifying month for Montana Free Press reporters, and not just because the weather’s turning nice. First, the Society of Professional Journalists Northwest chapter’s Excellence in Journalism contest honored Mara Silvers with a first-place award in Racial Equity Reporting for her series “Keeping the Kids,” which examined the over-representation of Native American children in Montana’s foster care system. The regional SPJ chapter also awarded Alex Sakariassen and John Stember with first place in Business & Economics Reporting for “Montana’s stubborn childcare conundrum,” and Jacob Olness with second place in Graphics and Illustrations for our breakdown of Gov. Greg Gianforte’s charitable giving.
Additionally, the Montana Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest garnered a first place in the Mark Henckel Outdoor Writing Award for Amanda Eggert’s “Missing out on mule deer,” a Best News Story first place for John Adams’ “Gallatin County sheriff says 28-year-old cold case solved,” and first place in Best Graphic for Sakariassen and Margo Stoney’s “Twin constitutional initiatives aim to make Montana elections more competitive.” Mara Silvers also took second place in Best Investigative Journalism and Best Political Coverage for her reporting on conditions at the Warm Springs psychiatric hospital and Gianforte’s intraparty reelection challenge, respectively. The MTFP newsroom also won a handful of second- and third-place MNA awards for best graphics, multimedia presentation, website, and education coverage.
—Brad Tyer
Brad — I’d probably never even have heard about it if the author weren’t a dear old friend with whom I spent many tipsy post-collegiate evenings geeking out over book-cover design and Raymond Carver short stories, but she is, and I did, and I’m finding Andrea Zarafshon Moore’s “Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory” a challenging-in-all-the-good-ways read, and an unexpectedly rewarding invitation into the previously invisible (to me) genre of American art song.
Tom — I’m about halfway through political scientist Yascha Mounk’s “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.” Often mischaracterized as anti-woke, the book argues for the universal advancement of rights over the parsing of social justice reforms into the cul-de-sacs of identity politics. Advancing humanist principles universally is a heavy lift, which avoids the trap of division, Mounk, a Johns Hopkins University professor, argues.
Mara — Before you start lighting off fireworks pell-mell, take a few minutes to talk to your neighbors and avoid surprises. That’s the advice of the Montana VA, which says unexpected bangs and explosions can create triggers for veterans with PTSD. Other resources for veterans and their families are available on the department’s website.
Leigh — I found myself thinking about sterilized flies falling from the sky this week. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is planning to breed billions of radiation-neutered New World Screwworm flies as part of a long game aimed at negating the threat the flies’ flesh-eating larvae pose to livestock. Planes will air-drop the sterile flies in hopes they’ll produce unfertilized screwworm eggs, driving down the population of screwworm larvae and in the process forever altering my perception of parasite mitigation.
Eric — Are you actually checking your email on the Fourth of July? If so, take a moment to re-read this Declaration of Independence thing that gave us the holiday (and also, you know, our wonderful, imperfect nation).
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