{"id":369014,"date":"2026-07-11T02:19:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369014\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T02:19:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:19:24","slug":"houston-attorney-fears-ice-could-deport-witnesses-to-fatal-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369014\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston attorney fears ICE could deport witnesses to fatal shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston immigration attorney Hugo\u00a0Balderas-Ibarra demanded that ICE release his clients from the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe as federal and county officials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/news\/houston-texas\/immigration\/article\/sean-teare-ice-investigation-22340649.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">investigate the shooting<\/a> that killed\u00a0Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Magnolia Park Tuesday. Balderas-Ibarra is representing Daniel\u00a0Tirado Pantoja and identified his other client as Jose.<\/p>\n<p>Jose Rojas, a 51-year-old Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. for decades, was among those detained, the Associated Press reported. Salgado&#8217;s brother Victor also was detained, according to League of United Latin American Citizens CEO Juan\u00a0Proa\u00f1o.<\/p>\n<p>Balderas-Ibarra said he&#8217;s worried his clients may be pressured into signing documents authorizing their &#8220;voluntary departure.&#8221; The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is extremely important that we preserve the integrity of this investigation,&#8221; Balderas-Ibarra said at a press conference on Friday. &#8220;That will all be out the window if they are deported.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>ICE said Salgado evaded arrest, rammed an agency vehicle and tried running over an ICE agent, but Balderas-Ibarra said the workers who were in Salgado&#8217;s van have an &#8220;extremely different&#8221; account. They told the attorney that an ICE agent was never standing in front of their vehicle, or even within a direct line of it, and their attorney accused ICE&#8217;s account of being false.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe my clients are telling the truth,&#8221; Balderas-Ibarra said.<\/p>\n<p>Balderas-Ibarra said he&#8217;s not aware that ICE has threatened his clients, but it remains a possibility as a known tactic by the agency. He said the case&#8217;s magnitude could also factor into potential pressure from ICE.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They do threaten immigrants with deportation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They threaten them with 10-year penalties. They threaten them with never being able to come back to the United States legally. This is just a tactic that they use in order to in order to expeditiously remove as many immigrants as possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Staff writer Juli\u00e1n Aguilar and Ralph Green contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston immigration attorney Hugo\u00a0Balderas-Ibarra demanded that ICE release his clients from the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[86133,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-369014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-hc-crime","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}