CHICAGO (AP) — On Thursday, a man accused of placing a $10,000 bounty on the life of a senior Border Patrol official via Snapchat was acquitted in the first criminal trial linked to the immigration enforcement initiatives in the Chicago region initiated last year.

After less than four hours of deliberation, the jury returned a not guilty verdict for 37-year-old Juan Espinoza Martinez. He had been charged with murder-for-hire, a crime that carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison. The trial, held in federal court, was a recent examination of the Trump administration’s credibility regarding federal enforcement efforts spanning from Minnesota to Maine.

During the trial, Espinoza Martinez, clad in a suit and tie, listened attentively with his arms crossed. Following the court’s adjournment, he expressed gratitude by embracing and shaking hands with his legal team.

Defense attorneys refrained from commenting, and prosecutors also chose not to speak to reporters gathered in the federal courthouse lobby in downtown Chicago. Jurors similarly remained silent.

The prosecution’s case centered on Snapchat messages Espinoza Martinez sent to his younger brother and a friend, who was later revealed to be a government informant. One message stated, “10k if u take him down,” accompanied by a photo of Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol leader known for overseeing stringent enforcement actions nationwide, notably in the Chicago area.

“Those words do not indicate that this was a joke,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Yonan told jurors during Thursday’s closing arguments. “Those words have meaning. They are not innocent and harmless words.”

But defense attorneys said the government didn’t show any evidence against Espinoza Martinez who sent the messages as “neighborhood gossip” after coming home from work and unwinding with beers. He didn’t follow up on the exchanges and had only a few dollars in his bank account.

“Sending a message about gossip that you heard in the neighborhood, it’s not murder for hire,” his defense attorney Dena Singer told jurors. “It’s not a federal crime.”

Her office did not return a message seeking comment after the verdict. Neither did the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago or the Department of Homeland Security.

In court, prosecutors accused Espinoza Martinez of being “fixated and obsessed” with Bovino and cited other messages where he criticized the crackdown.

Espinoza Martinez was arrested in October as the city of 2.7 million and surrounding suburbs were seeing a surge of federal immigration officers. Protests and standoffs with agents were common, particularly in the city’s heavily Mexican Little Village neighborhood where Espinoza Martinez lived.

He did not testify at his trial.

But attorneys played clips of his interview with law enforcement where he said he was confused about the charges and that he sent the messages without much thought while scrolling social media after work.

“I didn’t threaten anyone,” he told investigators, interchanging English and Spanish at times in the interview. “I’m not saying that I was telling them to do it.”

Born in Mexico, he’s lived in Chicago for years but doesn’t have citizenship.

DHS touted Espinoza Martinez’s arrest on social media with unredacted photos of his face, referring to him as a “depraved” gang member. Bovino has held the case up as an example of the increasing dangers faced by federal agents. Prosecutors included Yonan, the second-highest ranking federal prosecutor in the Chicago region.

But several federal lawsuits in Chicago have fueled skepticism about DHS’s narratives. Of the roughly 30 criminal cases stemming from Operation Midway Blitz, charges have been dismissed or dropped in about half. In a notable lawsuit that forced Bovino to sit for depositions, a federal judge found he lied under oath including about alleged gang threats.

Bovino did not testify at Espinoza Martinez’s trial.

Nationwide, dozens of criminal cases tied to immigration operations have also crumbled.

Federal prosecutors initially referred to Espinoza Martinez as a “ranking member” of the Latin Kings, but their lack of evidence led U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow to bar testimony on the Chicago street gang at trial. According to the criminal complaint, Espinoza Martinez allegedly sent messages on behalf of the gang to other gang members.

At trial, there were minor mentions of the gang, including Espinoza Martinez saying in his interview that he had nothing to do with the Latin Kings. His brother, Oscar, testified that he took the Snapchat messages as a joke and were something he’d already seen on Facebook.

Singer poked holes in the government’s case, including in the testimony of their first witness Adrian Jimenez.

The 44-year-old owns a construction company and had been in touch with Espinoza Martinez over Snapchat about work. Unknown to Espinoza Martinez, he had also worked as a paid government informant over the years after serving a prison sentence for a felony. He shared the Snapchats with a federal investigator.

Jimenez, who suffers from back problems, walked slowly with a limp to the witness chair and needed help getting up.

“Would you solicit for hire an individual that was in that much pain and could barely walk?” Singer said to jurors. “That doesn’t make any sense.”