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Police close a section of Canal Street as demonstrators gather for a protest, march and candlelight vigil following the officer-involved shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a federal immigration enforcement operation the previous day in Houston on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. The shooting is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.<\/p>\n
Raquel Natalicchio\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
A federal search warrant\u00a0obtained\u00a0by the FBI<\/a> shows that investigators are searching the van driven by\u00a0Lorenzo Salgado Araujo for evidence of drugs after he was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent<\/a>.<\/p>\n An FBI agent requested a warrant from a U.S. magistrate judge on Tuesday, according to court records. The agent sought permission to search a white Ford Transit van, which he said has not been entered or searched since the July 7 shooting.<\/p>\n The warrant marks an unusual development in the shooting investigation. Federal search warrants out of the Southern District of Texas are usually unavailable for public viewing so early in an investigation. Court records as of Tuesday label the document as sealed, despite it being available to be downloaded.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Federal officials didn’t immediately explain why the court record was available publicly. Salgado\u00a0had no criminal history in Harris County, and the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia that ICE agents had intended to target someone else<\/a> \u2014 not Salgado.<\/p>\n Houston defense attorney David Adler, who has practiced for 30 years, said he’s never heard of a federal\u00a0warrant being open to the public so quickly.<\/p>\n “I have not seen this before,” Adler said. “Typically these things are filed under seal and they remain under seal until there’s an order to unseal.”<\/p>\n The agent, who is assigned to the FBI’s Houston field office, wrote that he was investigating a case involving possession of a controlled substance.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n MORE ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Attorney for ICE shooting witnesses pleads no contest to domestic violence charge in Florida<\/a><\/p>\n The warrant briefly describes the chase and Salgado’s shooting.<\/p>\n The FBI investigator wrote that the ICE\u00a0agents attempted to pull the van over at 6:45 a.m. and claims that Salgado “refused to stop and instead drove over a median in an apparent attempt to flee.”<\/p>\n The agent wrote that officers didn’t initially pursue the vehicle, but later located the van on Canal Street, where the shooting happened.<\/p>\n The description matches the sequence of events shown in security camera videos obtained by various media outlets in the days since the shooting. Those videos appear to show the immigration agents pursuing the van south on Wayside Drive and continuing the chase on Canal Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n No video has emerged showing where and when the chase started.<\/p>\n The FBI agent wrote that he arrived at the scene after the shooting and inspected the van from the outside.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Everything we know about the fatal Houston ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo<\/a><\/p>\n According to the warrant, the agent saw bags with a “white crystal-like substance” on the dashboard and on a passenger floorboard.<\/p>\n The warrant includes two photos of the plastic baggies sitting on the floor and dashboard. The substance inside the baggies was not identifiable. The bags are sitting among piles of pencils and other debris.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The agent wrote that the bags were “consistent with methamphetamine,” but provided no other evidence about the drugs.<\/p>\n Photographs from inside Lorenzo Salgado’s work van show items wrapped in plastic on a floorboard and dashboard. A search warrant made public on Wednesday showed that FBI investigators sought access to the van to seize the items and test them as part of a drug investigation<\/p>\n Courtesy\/Department of Justice<\/p>\n Court records label the warrant as sealed, but the document was\u00a0accessible on PACER<\/a>, the publicly accessible court records website managed by the federal court system. There’s no order in the case file showing U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Bennett ordering the release of the document.<\/p>\n An FBI spokesman on Wednesday afternoon referred questions about the warrant to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Angela Dodge, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office, said in a series of text messages Wednesday evening that the warrant was never intended to be filed under seal. Dodge didn’t immediately respond to questions about why the Department of Justice changed from its usual precedent of keeping warrant affidavits secret.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Adler and other people familiar with Houston’s federal courthouse agreed the release was a rarity.<\/p>\n Ken Magidson, a former U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Texas, said prosecutors would normally wait for an indictment or for charges to be filed to request warrant documents to be unsealed, in order to preserve evidence and witness testimony in the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul Morgan, another defense attorney, questioned whether authorities needed a search warrant to get inside the van, noting that authorities don’t always need search warrants, especially when they say there’s an urgent threat to public safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n If a search warrant wasn’t necessary, “this would be a publicity stunt,” Morgan said.<\/p>\n In a statement, Ruby Powers, one of the attorneys for the men in the van, declined to comment on the warrant.<\/p>\n “We\u2019ll allow the authorities to pursue their investigation,” Powers said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n