Family says no official told them Salgado Araujo had died
Rep. Sylvia Garcia said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director has promised to equip all field officers with body cameras by the end of July, following the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston this month. Garcia said the pledge came less than a month after President Donald Trump signed an immigration enforcement bill.
Salgado Araujo, 52, was a husband and father of three American sons who had lived in the United States for 35 years, running a construction business. He was driving his crew to a job on July 7 when ICE agents in unmarked vehicles stopped his van in Houston’s East End. The agents were looking for two Guatemalan nationals, not Salgado Araujo, the Department of Homeland Security later confirmed — as MSI previously reported. ICE said the officers were not wearing body cameras and have not provided footage to corroborate their account that Salgado Araujo tried to run over an agent.
Ronaldo Salgado, the victim’s son, told the Guardian that he spent July 7 searching for his father and later found a video online showing a man shot in the street. He said he recognized his father by his voice, crying for help, and that no official told the family of his death — he learned it from social media and then called his mother so she would not learn it the same way.
At least two of the surviving passengers in the van dispute the government’s version of events, according to their attorney, who said the witnesses gave consistent accounts when interviewed separately. They told the attorney that no agent stood in front of the van and that shots came through its passenger side. Houston’s district attorney said federal authorities have denied him access to the vehicle.
The shooting is at least the 10th fatal incident involving federal immigration officers since Trump’s second term began. Less than a week after Salgado Araujo’s death, an ICE officer fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, according to state House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, who said the FBI would investigate. Former acting ICE Director John Sandweg has called the rise in shootings a direct byproduct of the administration’s shift toward arrests on public streets, according to the Guardian.
Hundreds of people gathered in Magnolia Park, a historic Mexican American neighborhood in Houston, on July 11 to mourn Salgado Araujo. Residents there told the Guardian they had learned to watch for unmarked cars before the one that stopped Salgado Araujo’s van passed through.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Monday that her government will file criminal complaints with U.S. prosecutors over the killing of Salgado Araujo and 16 other Mexican citizens, according to several news reports. Sheinbaum said the action does not risk bilateral ties with the Trump administration given ongoing trade and security cooperation.