Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s radio silence on the ICE shooting in Houston is even more jarring given he was on the radio this week for hours after the shooting.<\/p>\n
Abbott had White House Border Czar Tom Homan on during his guest hosting duties on The Sean Hannity Show on Tuesday, where they celebrated ICE ramping up its deportation activities nationwide. But neither said a word about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.<\/p>\n
Salgado was shot early Tuesday morning in Houston\u2019s East End after ICE agents attempted to pull over the van he was driving with three other passengers, including his brother, as the work crew was on their way to a construction site. Salgado is a Mexican national who did not have U.S. citizenship. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, told reporters that Salgado wasn\u2019t the target<\/a> of the stop when his vehicle was pulled over.<\/p>\n Abbott didn\u2019t talk about the shooting during the radio program or on his social media accounts since. As of Friday afternoon, he\u2019d posted about his family dog passing away and promotions of his radio program from earlier in the week.<\/p>\n Abbott’s silence isn\u2019t\u00a0all that shocking, politically, given the victim was undocumented\u00a0as confirmed by his\u00a0family. In Minnesota, the shooting victims were both U.S. citizens,\u00a0which allowed GOP leaders to raise concerns.<\/p>\n U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Houston, has also been quiet on social media about the shooting. Cruz was\u00a0on the\u00a0same Hannity show with Abbott on Tuesday after the shooting, with neither mentioning it even though it was already being widely reported when they went on air.<\/p>\n “This is an active investigation, and I have full confidence that once it is complete we will have a full and accurate account of what occurred,” Cruz said in a statement.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s Republican Party, there\u2019s just not much of a lane to criticize President Donald Trump\u2019s ICE when the victim is not in the country legally, even if it’s a person who has been here decades, is pursuing legal authorization and has\u00a0stayed out of any legal trouble \u2013\u00a0as was the case with Salgado.<\/p>\n Whether Abbott and fellow Republicans can continue to ignore the killing is another question. ICE’s initial account\u00a0that its agents\u00a0fired at Salgado in self-defense is now being questioned by a lawyer for the three migrants who were traveling\u00a0with Salgado at the time, each of whom reportedly told him they posed no threat to the agents.<\/p>\n The bigger the story gets, the more pressure Abbott could be under to weigh in, especially given that his party is facing a tough midterm this November. The governor\u00a0has committed to not only defeating Democrats statewide,\u00a0but\u00a0flipping Harris County red in the process<\/a>. Salgado’s killing can’t be helping him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s radio silence on the ICE shooting in Houston is even more jarring given he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-369386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369386","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=369386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}