{"id":374375,"date":"2026-07-15T18:45:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/374375\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T18:45:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:45:19","slug":"houston-demands-action-after-killing-of-lorenzo-salgado-araujo-ice-hunts-us-like-animals-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/374375\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston demands action after killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo: \u2018ICE hunts us like animals\u2019 | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 100 people filled the council chamber at Houston<\/a> city hall on Tuesday, spilling into the hallways as they waited their turn to address the mayor, John Whitmire, and the rest of the city council. Outside, a crowd gathered on the plaza. Their chants of \u201cDo your job! Do your job!\u201d carried through the chamber walls.<\/p>\n

Nearly all were there to demand the same thing: accountability for the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE hunts us like animals,\u201d testified Maria Cervantes, who immigrated from Mexico and grew up in the East End neighborhood where Salgado Araujo was shot. \u201cI can\u2019t help but think, who\u2019s next? Am I going to get a bullet to the head for being brown?\u201d<\/p>\n

Salgado Araujo, a business owner and father of three, was shot dead in his vehicle while heading to a job site with his construction crew last Tuesday. The mayor has yet to explain whether the city will launch an independent investigation, while ICE has said Salgado Araujo was not the agency\u2019s intended target.<\/p>\n

Salgado Araujo\u2019s death comes amid a wave of immigration enforcement activity across the country that has included fatal encounters in Minnesota and, more recently, a shooting in Maine that killed 26-year-old Joan Sebasti\u00e1n Dur\u00e1n Guerrero. The proximity of the two killings, in different states within the same week, has become a rallying point for organizers who say the pattern points to indiscriminate tactics rather than isolated incidents.<\/p>\n

A protest at Houston city hall after an ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on 11 July in Houston, Texas. Photograph: Matthew Guzman\/Zuma Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

For Houston\u2019s immigrant justice groups, Tuesday\u2019s protest was not a starting point but a continuation of organizing that stretches back to before Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s second inauguration, from outreach at the street corners where day laborers gather, to safety-planning sessions with local businesses. Now, the groups are doubling down on those efforts in the wake of the shooting \u2013 and only getting louder. Among their demands: the release of three men who were riding with Salgado Araujo at the time of the shooting, an independent investigation into the killing and the public release of the names of the ICE agents involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe watched what happened in Minnesota and we are seeing what happened in Maine and now in Florida. It is absolutely ridiculous,\u201d said Uncle Eagle, a local organizer with 50501 and the national No Kings coalition. \u201cBut this is bringing the coalition together. Trust and honesty, repeated over time, is what builds a community capable of sustained pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the protest outside ended, Jasmine Khadem Gonz\u00e1lez, an immigrant rights organizer with Houston Democratic Socialists of America, did not go home. She led a Know Your Rights training, a routine she has carried out for more than a year, teaching people what to do if ICE agents show up at their home, their workplace or their car.<\/p>\n

Eight people attended her Tuesday night training at a location kept private for safety reasons. Gonz\u00e1lez walked them through their constitutional protections, including the right to remain silent and the difference between an administrative warrant and a judicial one.<\/p>\n

But the killing of Salgado Araujo, along with the recent ICE shootings of Dur\u00e1n in Maine and Renee Goode and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, has forced Gonz\u00e1lez to adjust the training. Attendees now ask a harder question: what happens when ICE violates the very rights they are learning about?<\/p>\n

In response, Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s training now includes more instructions for documenting agents in the field, filming when it is safe and noting badge numbers, license plates and timestamps, so that the record exists even when the law is not followed. She also spends significant time on what to do when it is someone else, a neighbor or a stranger, who is being detained, noting the lack of bystander footage when Salgado Araujo was killed.<\/p>\n

At the Tuesday training, Gonz\u00e1lez stressed the importance of keeping the camera focused on the agents rather than on the person being detained, since it is the agents\u2019 conduct that may be scrutinized later. \u201cThe day is going to come when we are going to hold these ICE agents accountable,\u201d she said, \u201cand we need to have all of the evidence possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Houston\u2019s immigrant rights activists secured a victory earlier this year, when the city council passed an ordinance limiting cooperation between the Houston police department and ICE. Gonz\u00e1lez said organizers had documented cases where HPD ran license plates during routine traffic stops, and if they discovered drivers had ICE administrative warrants, which carry no legal authority to arrest, police then held people at the scene, sometimes for hours, until federal agents arrived.<\/p>\n

While the ordinance passed after months of mobilization, the governor, Greg Abbott, moved to withhold city grant funding a week later, and the council and mayor effectively repealed the ordinance in response. Organizers want the ordinance reinstated.<\/p>\n

The protest at Houston city hall, on 11 July. Photograph: Mark Felix\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In the wake of Salgado Araujo\u2019s killing, activists are also grappling with its impact on the East End, the tightly knit historically Latino community. \u201cThe connection that I draw [from the shooting] is that our immigrant and Hispanic Latino communities are disposable,\u201d said Esmeralda Ledezma, who spent Tuesday inside the council chamber on behalf of the immigrant justice non-profit Woori Juntos. \u201cWe built the community brick by brick, and it gets torn down and redeveloped over the sake of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ledezma said the killing had forced a reckoning in the East End community, which is already struggling with displacement and rising costs, and where new development has accelerated as the city hosted Fifa World Cup matches. She said fears now run deeper than economic anxiety. Watching details of Salgado Araujo\u2019s case unfold, she said, has left her uncertain what to tell her own parents \u2013 who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in search of a better life \u2013 each time they leave the house.<\/p>\n

SEIU Texas<\/a>, the labor union that represents more than 8,000 service workers in the state, had relocated its offices into the East End only weeks before the shooting, just blocks from where Salgado Araujo was killed. Its first event in the new location ended up being a vigil rather than the open house it had planned.<\/p>\n

Elsa Caballero, the union\u2019s president, said that Salgado Araujo had put three children through college, one of whom became a teacher. \u201cThese are working-class people who are thriving and making this economy better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Caballero said the coalition\u2019s most urgent ask of state leaders is for Texas\u2019s Republican congressional delegation to speak out. \u201cThe more Republicans that actually start making demands,\u201d she said, \u201cthe more likely something changes, because right now they\u2019re the ones with the power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organizers said canvassing efforts are expected to continue in the East End and beyond in the coming weeks, with protests planned every weekend and a larger mobilization planned around the city council\u2019s 28 July evening session.<\/p>\n

\u201dWe are sounding the alarm. We need ICE out of our city,\u201d said Ledezma. \u201cWhen ICE is on the ground, they kill. We cannot let this happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 100 people filled the council chamber at Houston city hall on Tuesday, spilling into the hallways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-374375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374375","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=374375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}