The men who witnessed the killing of a 52-year-old father of three children in Houston by a federal immigration officer are disputing the Trump administration’s narrative of the fatal shooting on the streets of Houston.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an undocumented Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. for 35 years, was not the intended target of a traffic stop that led to his death on Tuesday morning, officials now say. The witnesses in the car with him — Salgado Araujo’s brother and two of their coworkers — were also reportedly not the targets of the stop.
The men, the only known witnesses to the shooting, say immigration authorities are now pressuring them to sign deportation orders to leave the country.
Hours after his death, Homeland Security claimed Salgado Araujo tried to “evade arrest” and “weaponized his vehicle” in an attempt to “run over” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who then fired “in self-defense.” But none of the officers involved in the operation were wearing body-worn cameras at the time, according to Homeland Security.
Witness accounts and statements from Salgado Araujo’s family members and lawyers representing them are throwing into question the official account from the Trump administration, which has seen at least 10 people killed by immigration agents as the president accelerates a mass deportation campaign.
How the shooting unfolded
Salgado Araujo had a small construction business and was working on obtaining legal status, according to his family.
After having breakfast with his wife early Tuesday morning, Salgado Arauja picked up his coworkers in his van before heading to a construction site. The men, who are undocumented, have each lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and do not have a criminal record, according to an attorney representing them.
Around 6:30 a.m., after picking up ice and water, they pulled up to a stop light when an unmarked vehicle started following them, the men told The Washington Post in statements through an attorney.
When the light turned green, the unmarked car pulled onto the shoulder and accelerated to cut in front of Salgado Araujo, who was driving.
The unmarked car hit its brakes, and Salgado Araujo made a U-turn, the witnesses said. Officers then hit their police lights.
With heavy construction on the road ahead of him, Salgado Araujo was driving slowly, at no more than 5 mph, when ICE agents rammed their vehicles into his van, according to the men.
Salgado Araujo did use his van to hit them, they said.
Shortly after the shooting, Homeland Security released a statement saying Salgado Araujo “weaponized” his van “in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”
“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas wrote in a handwritten statement to an attorney speaking to The Washington Post.
“It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over,” he added. “There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra told the newspaper that all three men, who are not being detained together in ICE custody, recounted the events similarly.
“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.”
With ICE vehicles on either side of the van, an officer jumped out of one of the vehicles and ran toward them while shouting “stop!” — then immediately started firing, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to the men who witnessed the shooting.
“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” his brother Victor Salgado told Balderas-Ibarra, according to The Washington Post. Victor Salgado was in the passenger seat, he said.
Officers surrounded the van and pulled Salgado Araujo to the ground and handcuffed the hands and feet of the other men in the van, they said.
Bystander video of the encounter, which does not show the shooting itself, shows several men lying face down on the ground along with Salgado Araujo while two officers crouch over him and radio for help.
Salgado Araujo, who was shot in the abdomen, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In a statement to The Independent, Homeland Security said the agency’s Office of Inspector General was leading an investigation into the shooting while the FBI’s Houston office is leading a probe “into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
Aftermath and calls for investigations
Officers removed all identifying information from Salgado Araujo before putting him in an ambulance, according to family members.
He was received at a hospital as a John Doe, they said.
The mixed-status family, with a next of kin who is undocumented, is still trying to regain control of Salgado Araujo’s body from authorities to plan for his funeral, according to Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Salgado Araujo “dedicated his life to giving his family the American dream,” his son Ronaldo Araujo said during an emotional press conference on Wednesday.
“I learned of my father’s passing from a news report on social media, not the hospital, not law enforcement,” he said through tears.
“I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot,” he said. “I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out.”
The family and members of Congress are demanding independent investigations into the deadly shooting, including the release of footage as well as radio communications and witness statements.
But the officers “had not been issued body-worn cameras,” according to a statement from Homeland Security, which blamed the lapse on the partial government shutdowns that the Trump administration has blamed on congressional Democrats.
Salgado Araujo and his coworkers were also not the intended targets of the immigration enforcement operation that sparked the killing, according to The New York Times.
The intended targets of the ICE investigation were two people from Guatemala, according to the newspaper, citing two people with knowledge of the matter who were not permitted to discuss the case.
Federal agents had reportedly surveilled an address connected to one of the two Guatemalans weeks earlier and saw two white vans at the property, according to Homeland Security.
On Tuesday morning, agents “observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target” and initiated the traffic stop that culminated in the death ofSalgado Araujo, a spokesperson said.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare has also accused federal authorities of sidelining local officials from the government’s probe while Salgado Araujo’s family and Houston-area members of Congress press for investigations.
“We are demanding the full truth, the full footage, and a real independent investigation,” Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia said Thursday. "Lorenzo's family deserves answers. Houston deserves answers. And we will not let DHS or ICE bury this, stall for time, or hide behind the same tired lies.”
ICE criticized as mass deportation campaign ramps up
The deadly incident is not the first time that Homeland Security has justified a shooting with claims that a target has tried to run over agents only for evidence to emerge that contradicts the government’s statements.
Agents have shot at least 20 people within the last year, and nearly all of them were in their cars.
Marimar Martinez, a teacher’s assistant and U.S. citizen who was accused of assaulting officers with her car during the Trump administration’s surge into Chicago last year, was shot five times during a traffic stop.
Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges after lawyers raised critical questions about evidence used against her.
The latest shooting follows a revamped effort to arrest and deport tens of thousands of people from the country following the Trump administration’s aggressive surge of immigration agents into Democratic-led cities that sparked widespread outrage.
Federal authorities reportedly arrested more than 10,000 people in recent weeks, including more than 2,400 immigrants within a single day.
“The Trump administration is fulfilling the promise that President Trump was elected on — deporting criminal illegal aliens,” a White House official told The Independent earlier this month.
The administration appears to have abandoned the militarized surges under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agency’s new Secretary Markwayne Mullin entered office earlier this year hoping to keep the agency out of the headlines as he works to fulfill the president’s mandate to deport one million people a year.
