Lorenzo Salgado Araujo left his Houston home at 5:54 a.m. on Tuesday, July 7, climbed into his white work van, and went to pick up his construction crew — his brother and two coworkers — the way he did nearly every morning.
Less than an hour later, an ICE agent shot him in the stomach on Canal Street in the city’s East End.
He died at Ben Taub Hospital.
He was 52 years old, a father of three U.S. citizen sons, and he had lived and worked in this country for nearly 35 years.*
He was also, according to multiple reports, not the person ICE was looking for.
Salgado Araujo’s son spoke about his father at a press conference. One line from his remarks is a gut punch: “He did not deserve to be reduced to the headline, ‘Mexican man shot and killed.”’ 😢
ICE’s story is falling apart
ICE’s official account claims Salgado Araujo “rammed” a law enforcement vehicle during an attempted traffic stop, ignored verbal commands, and tried to run over an agent — forcing an officer to fire “in self-defense.”
How many times are they going to use that narrative after ICE shoots someone?! Even the police officer who shot and killed a 1-year-old said the mother was trying to hit him with her car.
Before I continue, I’d like to offer ICE and other law enforcement officers a piece of advice:
Move out of the way! If you have time to raise your weapon and fire before the vehicle “hits” you, then you have enough time to MOVE (dive, run, roll, whatever).
The three men who were inside the van with him — the coworkers he had just picked up, who were detained at the scene — say that is false.
Through their attorney, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, the men stated that at no point did the van ram ICE agents, and at no point were the agents’ lives in danger.
Migrants who witnessed the shooting told The Washington Post the same thing: he did not ram the officers.
The New York Times reported that ICE’s actual targets that morning were two people from Guatemala who were not in Salgado Araujo’s van at all.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia’s office confirmed Thursday that Salgado Araujo was not the intended target. She later spoke about the witnesses who were in the van with him. DHS may be trying to expedite their deportations to prevent them from testifying against ICE if there’s a trial.
DHS’s own updated statement says agents had been surveilling a suspect’s address for weeks, noticed two white vans there, and stopped Salgado Araujo on Tuesday because his van — one of the most common work vehicles in America — was driven by someone who “resembled” their suspect (aka he was brown).
A man is dead because he looked like someone else driving a white van.
Unmarked SUVs, no badges he could see, no body cameras
Surveillance videos obtained by ABC13, CNN, and LULAC show two unmarked black SUVs pursuing Salgado Araujo’s van down Wayside Drive and onto Canal Street just before the shooting.
His family says his van and tools had been stolen before, so he was understandably wary of strange vehicles tailing him.
His oldest son, Ronaldo, says his father would have fully complied if he had known the men chasing him were law enforcement.
We may never know exactly what the agents did, because none of them were wearing body cameras.
DHS says the officers were simply “not issued” them, blaming government shutdowns for the delay (that’s becoming a common narrative as well) — even as the agency has historic new funding.
A former Secret Service agent who reviewed the available footage for KPRC 2 said he could not determine that the use of deadly force was justified from what is publicly visible.
What is visible: bystander video of Salgado Araujo lying face-down on the pavement next to his van, bleeding from the right side of his stomach, screaming “Help me! They shot me!” while a federal agent kneels over him on the phone.
The Harris County Medical Examiner has ruled his death a homicide — a penetrating gunshot wound to the torso. As of Thursday evening, ICE still had not returned his body to his family.
Who is investigating the investigators?
Three investigations are underway, and the structure of them tells its own story.
The DHS Office of Inspector General — the federal government investigating itself — is leading the probe into the shooting.
The FBI’s Houston field office is investigating the alleged “assault” on the federal officer, effectively treating the dead man as the suspect.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has opened its own independent investigation, but a spokesperson admits that “access to key evidence remains under federal control.”
The Houston Police Department says federal law gives it no independent jurisdiction to investigate a federal agency.
Mexico’s president has vowed to pursue legal action against the United States over the killing.
LULAC is offering a $5,000 reward for information and standing with the family in demanding a fully independent, transparent investigation.
Houston is not accepting the official story
On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people marched down Canal Street in Magnolia Park — Houston’s historic Latino neighborhood — chanting “ICE out of Houston.”
Candles, flowers, crosses, and handwritten notes now surround a growing memorial at the spot where Salgado Araujo was shot.
U.S. Reps. Al Green, Sylvia Garcia, and Christian Menefee joined the demonstrators demanding transparency.
“He did not deserve to die,” Ronaldo Salgado said of his father. “He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of Mexican man shot and killed by ICE.”
He deserved to finish his drive to work. He deserved agents who identified themselves, wore cameras, and confirmed they had the right person before drawing a weapon.
He deserved to come home to the family he spent 35 years providing for.
Instead, a mistaken-identity traffic stop by unmarked, camera-less federal agents ended with a homicide ruling — and an agency that expects the public to take its word for what happened.
Houston isn’t taking its word.
Neither should the rest of us.
* I’m sorry, but anyone who has been living, working, paying taxes, and raising children in this country for longer than 2 decades is a de facto American citizen in my eyes. Sanders. AOC. Omar. Tlaib. Frost. Khanna — anyone: draft the legislation because a new immigration law is about to drop in America, folks!
Sorry, I’m angry and couldn’t stop myself from breaking the third wall of journalism. Yes, I could just press the backspace key or select and delete all of this, but I won’t. This is what being real and authentic looks like, people.
Actually, this distracts from the story and it’s too important.
I’ll make it a footnote instead.
