{"id":369238,"date":"2026-07-11T07:17:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369238\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T07:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:17:20","slug":"houston-ice-shooting-witnesses-dispute-agents-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/369238\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston ICE shooting witnesses dispute agents\u2019 claims"},"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

The three men who were with a 52-year-old Houston man when he was fatally shot by an immigration agent earlier this week said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo never tried to run over anyone and that agents repeatedly fired into the vehicle from the side of the van, an attorney representing two of the men said during a news conference on Friday.<\/p>\n

Hugo Balderas Ibarra, an immigration attorney representing two of the three men who were passengers in the van driven by Salgado Araujo, said he talked to the three men on Thursday at a detention center where they were being held for deportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy clients reiterated that at no point was there ever an agent standing in front of the vehicle, nor was an agent ever placed in the line of danger,\u201d Balderas Ibarra. \u201cThat is simply false, and I believe my clients are telling the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balderas Ibarra and U.S. Rep. Syvia Garcia, D-Houston, said that Immigration and Custom Enforcement\u2019s version of events is not consistent with what three eyewitnesses told the immigration lawyer.<\/p>\n

According to a statement on Tuesday from an ICE spokesperson, federal agents attempted to stop Salgado Araujo\u2019s van as part of a \u201ctargeted enforcement\u201d operation. The statement said Salgado Araujo \u201cweaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a lie,\u201d Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, wrote in a handwritten statement to Balderas Ibarra that he shared with the Washington Post.<\/a> \u201cIt is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over \u2026 there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fatal shooting has renewed intense public scrutiny of ICE operations on American streets. Under the Trump administration, the agency has been given a goal of arresting 2,000 people per day<\/a> as part of the president\u2019s mass deportation goals. President Trump has prioritized cracking down on immigration in the interior of the country as fewer people in recent years have attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n

Since Trump\u2019s return to the White House, at least two people \u2014 one of them a U.S. citizen \u2014 have been killed by ICE agents in Texas. And according to a Texas Tribune <\/a>analysis of federal detainee death notifications and media reports, at least 14 other people have died in federal detention centers in Texas since January 2025. <\/p>\n

Nationally, at least 10 people, including Salgado Araujo, have been killed by immigration agents since Trump\u2019s return to office in January 2025, according to an analysis by The Guardian. <\/a><\/p>\n

In some of those cases, video footage from bystanders and other evidence have refuted Trump administration officials\u2019 initial narratives of what led up to the shootings.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a separate law enforcement agency needs to investigate the shooting to determine if it was justified, Garcia, Balderas Ibarra and Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said during the Friday news conference in Houston.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy investigators and my civil rights division have been out there from basically the moment the scene was released, up until today, looking for surveillance footage, talking to witnesses, doing everything that we can, and we do, in every case to ensure that a full, fair investigation is conducted, so that we can be transparent with our community,\u201d Teare said.<\/p>\n

Teare asked the public that if they have any footage \u201cregardless of whether or not you think that it\u2019s even relevant,\u201d to send it to his office. <\/p>\n

He said that his office will investigate the shooting but that because it involved a federal agency, they could face obstacles if federal investigators decline to share evidence with his office. He added that \u201cregardless of whether they do or not,\u201d his office will do what it can to find out what happened.<\/p>\n

Garcia said on Friday that acting ICE Director David Venturella informed her in a call <\/a>the day before that ICE agents didn\u2019t have any body-worn cameras or dashboard cameras during the shooting. Garcia also said that Venturella told her that neither Salgado Araujo nor his brother Victor Salgado, a passenger in the van, were the targets for ICE\u2019s operation. <\/p>\n

Venturella told her agents sought one of the other men in the van, Garcia said on Friday. But The New York Times reported<\/a> that none of the men ICE was looking for that day were in the van.<\/p>\n

On Thursday afternoon, DHS said in a statement that a tip led ICE agents to pursue Salgado Araujo\u2019s van. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter receiving a credible tip from our law enforcement partners, our officers conducted surveillance on a target\u2019s address,\u201d the DHS statement said. \u201cWeeks prior to the incident, they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target\u2019s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia said the detail about a separate law enforcement agency tipping off ICE agents was news to her. She added that the acting ICE director did not mention this to her and that details like this are what makes her doubt the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, is telling the full story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not prepared to say today that it\u2019s all lies, but it sure is looking that way,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n

Balderas Ibarra declined to go into the full details of what the men told him from detention, saying that because of a potential investigation he would refer to what he told the Washington Post on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The men told Balderas Ibarra that they were on their way to a construction job site after buying ice and water about 6:30 a.m. When they pulled up to a stoplight they noticed an unmarked vehicle following them, the Post reported. <\/p>\n

As Salgado Araujo began to accelerate at a green light, the other vehicle got onto the shoulder, accelerated and cut in front of the van, the men said, according to Balderas Ibarra\u2019s account. <\/p>\n

Salgado Araujo then made a U-turn and that\u2019s when agents turned on the police lights on their unmarked vehicle, the Post reported. At that point Salgado Araujo, according to the newspaper, was not driving more than 5 miles per hour when agents rammed their vehicles into his work van. <\/p>\n

\u201cLorenzo thought we had lost them but suddenly they surrounded us,\u201d Rojas wrote by hand on a legal pad viewed by the Post.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when an ICE agent got out of the unmarked vehicle and yelled \u201cStop.\u201d He then fired his weapon from the van\u2019s passenger side, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n

Salgado Araujo stopped and put the van in park when officers fired repeatedly into the van, the Post reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,\u201d wrote Victor Salgado, the driver\u2019s brother, according to Balderas Ibarra readout of his notes to the Post.<\/p>\n

Rojas described the ICE agents violently pulling Salgado Araujo out of the van and throwing him to the ground, the Post reported. They put handcuffs on the other men\u2019s wrists and feet and put them on the ground as Salgado Araujo yelled for help as he bled out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just happened so fast,\u201d Salgado told the attorney, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good people who didn\u2019t deserve this,\u201d Balderas Ibarra told the Post. \u201cThey were cooperating and not resisting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nOn Thursday, Mexico\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that they will file complaints with state prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Justice and file \u201ccivil actions against the companies that operate detention centers\u201d over conditions that the ministry claims led to the deaths of 14 Mexican nationals in those detention centers.<\/p>\n

Until now, the Mexican government has sent diplomatic notes of protest to the U.S. government following the deaths of Mexican citizens in U.S. custody or during encounters with ICE.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to go beyond diplomatic notes and the measures we have raised before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,\u201d Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday. \u201cThey respond to us, but then there is yet another tragic death of one of our fellow nationals in the United States related to detention, when their only offense is not having legal immigration documents, even though they were hired by a U.S. company. We cannot allow this mistreatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alejandro Santos Cid contributed to this story.<\/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":369239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,3647,6748],"class_list":["post-369238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-well-b-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369238","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=369238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}