The son of a 52-year-old man who was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston last week told MS NOW he wants his father to be remembered as a “hardworking man,” as he and his family continue to push for transparency from the federal government about the fatal shooting that has prompted outrage nationwide.
“We’re left without a father, my mom is left without a husband,” Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, told Jacob Soboroff on Saturday. “No matter how anyone puts it, a life was lost, and it was unfortunately someone who did not deserve it.”
Salgado said his father was “someone who dedicated his life to his craft, to his business, to his family [and] his employees,” adding, “This is a man who provided for us, who provided for my mom. He promised my mom that she would never have to work because he got us. So that’s how I want the world to remember my dad.”
Salgado Araujo was killed shortly before 7 a.m. on Tuesday while on his way to work. In a statement, ICE said officers shot the immigrant in “self-defense” after he “attempted to evade arrest” by driving his van into an unmarked law enforcement vehicle. However, eyewitness accounts have contradicted the agency’s version of events, and it has not released footage of the encounter to back up its claims.
Salgado told MS NOW his father, who had been in the United States for more than three decades, was a “law-abiding” resident and he was in the process of getting a work permit. Based on past conversations, Ronaldo Salgado said he believed “deep in [his] heart” his father did not know the vehicles following him were law enforcement.
“These were unmarked vehicles,” he said. “We’ve spoken many times as a family together on … what should happen in the event ICE detained him. There was a way for him to come back home to us had those vehicles been properly marked.”
Asked whether he had a message for President Donald Trump, Salgado said his focus remains on grieving.
“I do not want to speak to the president, nor do I have a message for him,” he told Soboroff. “I just want my dad. I just want to have a funeral for him.”
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Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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