{"id":369170,"date":"2026-07-11T05:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369170\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T05:27:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:27:20","slug":"houston-mayor-says-feds-arent-forthcoming-on-ice-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369170\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston mayor says feds aren\u2019t forthcoming on ICE shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Houston Mayor John Whitmire vowed Friday to \u201cpursue an independent and transparent\u201d local investigation into Tuesday\u2019s deadly ICE shooting but said federal control over evidence is proving difficult to overcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whitmire said he directed Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz to be \u201cproactive\u201d in pursuing an investigation amid witness statements that contradict ICE\u2019s account of the fatal shooting of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.<\/p>\n

Diaz has a meeting with Houston\u2019s FBI bureau chief next week, Whitmire said, adding that the chief asked the federal agency to \u201cstart sharing information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hands have been tied, but I\u2019ve instructed the chief [and] city attorney to untie those hands,\u201d Whitmire said in an afternoon news conference.<\/p>\n

Democratic leaders from across Texas and the country have called for an independent investigation into Tuesday\u2019s shooting death of Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent during an \u201cenforcement operation\u201d in Houston. The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Office of Inspector General is leading a federal investigation into the shooting.<\/p>\n

ICE said Salgado Araujo, who was stopped while driving a van, attempted to run over a federal agent. Three passengers in the van have disputed<\/a> that account, according to their lawyer. The men are in federal custody.<\/p>\n

Whitmire also expressed frustration about ICE\u2019s handling of the shooting and offered condolences to Salgado Araujo\u2019s family, who have lived in Houston for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Salgado was chased by unmarked vehicles, [and] before he could identify himself and speak as a Houstonian, he was shot and killed,\u201d Whitmire said. \u201cI\u2019ve met with his family today and expressed the entire city\u2019s condolences and anger, and assured them that I and the levels of government represented here today, and the DA\u2019s office, would do everything, use all of our resources and our waking hours, to pursue an independent and transparent investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Harris County district attorney\u2019s office launched its own investigation<\/a> into the shooting on Thursday, but District Attorney Sean Teare said his office has had limited access to evidence in part because of the federal agencies\u2019 involvement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whitmire said he had spoken with Teare about the difficulty of conducting their own investigations, as the FBI is \u201ctightly controlling\u201d all of the evidence related to the shooting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey control the scene, the deceased, the van, the witnesses. So yes, they control the investigation,\u201d Whitmire said.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s announcement was a shift from Whitmire\u2019s statements a day after the shooting, when he indicated that the city and its police department were incapable<\/a> of investigating Salgado Araujo\u2019s death because \u201cthere cannot be two ongoing investigations.\u201d HPD said none of its officers were involved in the shooting, which Whitmire also said meant they lacked jurisdiction to investigate.<\/p>\n

Friday morning, before Whitmire\u2019s directive, Diaz sent a letter<\/a> to the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI stating the Houston Police Department recognized it had \u201cno independent jurisdiction\u201d over a potential investigation and offering to make all of the department\u2019s resources available to aid federal agencies in their investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diaz echoed concerns during Friday\u2019s news conference, saying city police did not have the jurisdiction or access to evidence needed to complete a full investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Salgado Araujo was not the target<\/a> of ICE\u2019s operation, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, told The Texas Tribune on Thursday after she had spoken to acting ICE Director David Venturella. Diaz said information brought in part by Garcia\u2019s questioning of ICE actions shifted the police department\u2019s stance on whether to more aggressively pursue its own investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts have changed, right? So now we hear, because of the congresswoman\u2019s great work, that the wrong person was in the van, and well, perhaps it was the wrong van,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cThose are concerning, and they should be concerning to everybody in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

DHS has said they were given a tip from a local law enforcement partner before pursuing Salgado Araujo\u2019s van. Diaz repeatedly said the tip did not come from Houston\u2019s police department.<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 Department of Public Safety and the Harris County Sheriff\u2019s office, in statements to the Tribune, also said they did not provide the tip to ICE.<\/p>\n

Garcia said during Friday\u2019s news conference that none of the ICE agents involved had body cameras or dashboard cameras inside the unmarked car the agents used to pull over Salgado Araujo\u2019s van. Whitmire, a former Democratic state senator from Houston, criticized the circumstances leading to the shooting and ICE\u2019s lack of recording equipment or protocol usual for law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was chairman of [the Senate Committee on] Criminal Justice in Austin for 30 years, involved in many investigations and oversight reviews of police action in those 30 years,\u201d Whitmire said. \u201cNone are more egregious than the one that ICE brought to Houston Tuesday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Simpson contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2133,4092,3646,405,56,12023,3743,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-369170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-democrats","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-fbi","tag-harris-county","tag-houston","tag-investigations","tag-john-whitmire","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369170","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=369170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}