Houston ICE fatal shooting witnesses independently recount driver did not try to ram agents
The three men who were arrested during an immigration operation that resulted in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo said a federal officer fired at them almost immediately after exiting his vehicle and that at no point did the driver veer in his direction.
The migrants are disputing key elements of the Department of Homeland Security’s account of what transpired during a chaotic traffic stop in a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood in Houston on Tuesday. They spoke from immigration detention with attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, who shared their written and oral accounts with The Washington Post.
DHS released a statement hours after the deadly shooting saying that Salgado Araujo had rammed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle and “weaponized” his white work van “in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”
“That is a lie,” wrote Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, in a handwritten statement. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
Balderas-Ibarra spoke to Rojas, Daniel Tirado Pantoja, 43, and the shooting victim’s brother, Victor Salgado, 44, and said he heard the same story from each as he interviewed them separately. The men are not being housed together, the attorney said. All three are undocumented Mexican immigrants who are now facing removal proceedings.
“All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.” [Continue reading…]
Federal immigration agents who killed a man during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday had been searching for a different person, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.
The targets of the ICE investigation were two people from Guatemala, one of whom the agents believed was in a white van being driven by the man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who were not permitted to speak about the case.
But the Guatemalan immigrants were not in the van. Mr. Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the United States without authorization for 35 years, was on his way to work with three other men.
When agents tried to stop the vehicle, the encounter quickly escalated, and an agent shot Mr. Araujo in the abdomen. He died at a hospital hours later.
Homeland security officials said Mr. Araujo had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, though no video or other evidence for that claim has emerged.
Federal agents had surveilled an address connected to one of the two Guatemalans weeks before and had seen two white vans at the property, the spokeswoman said in a statement. When they returned to the address on Tuesday, she said, “they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target,” and initiated the traffic stop.
The agents were not wearing body cameras, according to the spokeswoman. Before trying to stop the van, the agents had looked into its owner and learned it was Mr. Araujo, who did not have legal status in the United States, according to the two people familiar with the case.
The shooting is part of a growing number of similar violent interactions involving civilians and immigration agents. More than 20 people have been shot at since September, nearly all of them in their cars. Some cases have been fatal. The shooting also comes as the Trump administration has ramped up its deportation campaign.
The killing of Mr. Araujo has incited outrage in Texas and beyond. Mr. Araujo’s sons said during a news briefing on Wednesday that they believed their father tried to get away because he was being chased by unmarked cars. Ronaldo Salgado, his oldest son, and a growing number of elected officials and immigration activists have demanded an independent inquiry.
“This is outrageous to me, and this is ridiculous to hear that no one in that van was a target of any sort of investigation,” Mr. Salgado said in response to the news that his father was not being sought by federal agents. [Continue reading…]
The Texas Tribune reports:Nationally, at least 10 people, including Salgado Araujo, have been killed by immigration agents since Trump’s return to office in January 2025, according to an analysis by The Guardian.
In some of those cases, video footage from bystanders and other evidence have refuted Trump administration officials’ initial narratives of what led up to the shootings.
That’s why a separate law enforcement agency needs to investigate the shooting to determine if it was justified, Garcia, Balderas Ibarra and Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said during the Friday news conference in Houston.
“My investigators and my civil rights division have been out there from basically the moment the scene was released, up until today, looking for surveillance footage, talking to witnesses, doing everything that we can, and we do, in every case to ensure that a full, fair investigation is conducted, so that we can be transparent with our community,” Teare said.
Teare asked the public that if they have any footage “regardless of whether or not you think that it’s even relevant,” to send it to his office.
He said that his office will investigate the shooting but that because it involved a federal agency, they could face obstacles if federal investigators decline to share evidence with his office. He added that “regardless of whether they do or not,” his office will do what it can to find out what happened. [Continue reading…]