For the last 35 years, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s day began the same way: He woke up at 5 a.m., kissed his wife goodbye, loaded his work van and drove off to pick up his construction crew for work in Houston, his family said.
But on Tuesday, Salgado Araujo’s day would not end as it always did. He would not come home to eat a hearty dinner prepared by his wife, then spend the rest of the evening on the porch listening to music in the house he had built for his family.
Around 7 a.m., as the 52-year-old father of three picked up the last of his crew in Houston’s East End area before heading north to finish construction on several houses, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in an unmarked car fatally shot the Mexican man inside his van, Salgado Araujo’s oldest son recounted Wednesday.
ICE said Salgado Araujo attempted to evade arrest as agents tried to conduct a traffic stop as part of a “targeted operation.” He rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow several verbal commands before an ICE agent fired his weapon in self-defense, the agency told CNN in a statement Tuesday.
Salgado Araujo had been living in the US without legal authorization, ICE said, without specifying whether the agents had been looking for him. He did not appear to have a criminal record, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Disputing the government’s account, Salgado Araujo’s family says they believe the man who’d been seeking a work permit would have stopped and complied with federal agents if he had known the car following him belonged to ICE or other law enforcement.
The three men who watched an ICE officer kill Lorenzo Salgado Araujo say the government’s account is false at every load-bearing point. Interviewed separately in immigration detention by attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra — accounts the Washington Post published overnight — Jose Trinidad Rojas, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Victor Salgado, the victim’s brother, each described the same scene: no officer ever stood in front of the van DHS claims was “weaponized” to run one down. “That is a lie,” Rojas wrote by hand from detention.
Their account, per the Post: the four men left for a construction job around 6:30 AM Tuesday when an unmarked car cut off their van and brake-checked it. Salgado Araujo U-turned; only then did lights come on. Crawling through road construction at roughly 5 mph, the van was rammed and boxed in by ICE vehicles on both sides — and an officer ran at the passenger side, yelled “Stop!”, and shot Salgado Araujo, 52, in the abdomen. The men say the firing continued after he braked and put the van in park. Agents cuffed his wrists and feet as he bled; his brother recalls one asking, in a mocking tone, “You wanted to escape, right?” Salgado Araujo reached Ben Taub Hospital as a John Doe and died there.
ICE’s own admissions already corroborate the edges. The acting director told Rep. Sylvia Garcia on Thursday that the agents wore no body cameras and no dash cameras — and that the administrative warrant named neither Salgado Araujo nor his brother. The New York Times reports the actual targets were two Guatemalan men; everyone in the van was Mexican, undocumented, decades in the country, no criminal records.
Federal immigration officers fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during an ICE operation in Houston, but the three migrants who were traveling with him dispute the government’s account of the incident. They told their attorney that officers opened fire almost immediately after exiting their vehicles and insisted Salgado Araujo never attempted to run over an officer. Their testimony directly contradicts the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that he “weaponized” his work van by trying to ram ICE personnel. The witnesses, interviewed separately while in immigration detention, all gave consistent accounts of the shooting.
After the shooting, witnesses said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo remained conscious and repeatedly called for help as he bled from his gunshot wounds. They alleged that ICE agents pulled him from the driver’s seat, threw him to the ground, and restrained the other passengers while he continued pleading for assistance. According to the passengers, medical aid was not immediately prioritized as they watched him deteriorate. Salgado Araujo was eventually transported to Ben Taub Hospital without any identification, where he was initially admitted as a “John Doe.” He later died from his injuries at the hospital.
The passengers also described what they considered degrading treatment immediately after the shooting. Victor Salgado, the victim’s brother, recalled an ICE agent mockingly asking him in Spanish, “Se querían escapar, verdad?” (”You wanted to escape, right?”) while Lorenzo lay gravely wounded nearby. He said the remark was made as the agents had already restrained the occupants and his brother was bleeding on the ground. The witnesses viewed the comment as callous given the severity of Lorenzo’s condition. Their attorney said all three men independently recounted similar details about the encounter.
The circumstances surrounding Salgado Araujo’s treatment after the shooting have become a central point of controversy in the case. His family, attorney, and supporters argue that the reported lack of urgency in providing aid, combined with the alleged mocking remark, raises serious questions about the officers’ conduct. They contend these actions conflict with DHS’s portrayal of officers acting solely in self-defense during a dangerous encounter. The attorney has called for an independent investigation, emphasizing that the witnesses’ accounts remained consistent despite being interviewed separately in detention. The case has intensified public scrutiny of ICE’s enforcement practices and the agency’s handling of officer-involved shootings.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire: For the Salgado family, life will never be the same. At no fault of theirs, Mr. Salgado was chased by a unmarked vehicles. Before he could identify himself and speak as a Houstonian, he was shot and killed. We will use all of our resources to pursue an independent and transparent investigation.
Responding to questions about the fatal ICE shooting in Texas, border czar Tom Homan argued that public distrust of ICE is driven by inaccurate media coverage and criticism from some members of Congress. He said many news outlets spread false information about the agency and echoed comparisons of ICE to a “secret police” force. Homan maintained that ICE is countering those narratives by releasing what he described as the facts about its operations. He concluded by claiming the agency is regaining public support because it is “putting the truth out there.”
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 