July 8, 2026
The family of a man shot dead by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Texas is demanding a thorough investigation into the shooting.
The request, made Wednesday, follows a fatal encounter in Houston on Tuesday, when an ICE agent opened fire on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop. The incident marks the latest in a series of contentious fatalities involving immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation initiative.
Relatives stated that Araujo was on the job at the time of his death, transporting a construction crew to a residential build nearby. They suggested he may have feared that occupants of the unmarked vehicles that intercepted him intended to steal his work equipment.
According to the family, the Mexican national had resided in the United States for 35 years and was actively pursuing legal status. He had no criminal history and labored diligently to provide for his three sons, all U.S. citizens.
“He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of ‘Mexican man shot and killed by ICE’,” his son Ronaldo Salgado told reporters at a news conference.
“He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father, and a job creator for dozens of men who also sought the American dream,” Salgado added.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contends that Araujo tried to ram an ICE agent, prompting the return of gunfire. Officials said his vehicle had first collided with an ICE automobile.
No footage or photographs of the shooting itself have been released, though a bystander captured the aftermath on video.
DHS noted that agents had focused on Araujo because he lacked formal immigration documentation.
Although the Trump administration originally pledged to deport only those with criminal records, it soon classified any undocumented individual as a criminal offender. Unauthorized entry into the U.S., however, is a civil infraction rather than a criminal one.
Advocacy organizations have alleged that immigration officers are employing broad “dragnet” tactics fueled by detention quotas, a claim the administration denies.
At the same Wednesday briefing, Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, argued that the enforcement campaign has fostered an environment where officers treat it as “open season on Latinos,” believing they can “shoot and explain later.”
The early account of the Texas shooting echoes the January killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. DHS initially claimed Good, a U.S. citizen, was trying to ram an agent when she was killed, but video evidence appeared to show her steering away as the agent fired after moving beside her car.
Days afterward, 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer while he was recording immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis.
Federal investigations into those deaths have yielded scant information despite the enforcement surge in the area. In an unusual step, the Justice Department declined to open a separate civil rights inquiry into Good’s fatal shooting.
Striving for the American Dream
At the news conference, Ronaldo Salgado described desperately searching for his father at the job site after his mother learned of the tragedy.
During the search, someone showed him video of his mortally wounded father.
“I recognized him, not by his face but by his voice crying for help as he lay in the street,” Salgado recalled.
“After almost 35 years of laboring to give us the American dream, he chose to start securing his own through a work permit,” Salgado said.
“We dotted every i and crossed every t, completed every form, and kept every appointment. He was on the verge of gaining legal status.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also denounced the shooting, indicating she is weighing legal action or an appeal to the United Nations.
“Another compatriot has died tragically in the United States over immigration detention, despite their sole ‘offense’ being a lack of proper papers,” Sheinbaum stated.
The incident is at least the eighth known fatality arising from encounters with federal immigration officers since the onset of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge.