![\"Houston](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lorenzo-salgado-araujo-houston-city-council.jpg\")
Houston Mayor John Whitmire speaking at the city council meeting Tuesday.Mark Felix\/AFP via Getty<\/p>\n
The mayor didn\u2019t like it one bit\u2014and, failing to read the room, he griped<\/a> about the crowd\u2019s \u201cbad behavior\u201d on Wednesday. But the mayor and council\u2019s delicate sensibilities aside, it was heartening to see residents claiming their places in the community, where, after all, Hispanics and Latinos make up 46 percent of the city\u2019s population, and about 21 percent<\/a> of Hispanics in Harris County live below the poverty line, which has historically made them all too easy to ignore. Here, at the council meeting, the flex of new power seemed to be appearing in real time. But that public outrage was buttressed by something old: The sometimes fractious Harris County Latino caucus was clearly acting as one to push for answers about ICE\u2019s actions; from precinct chairpeople to lawmakers in the nation\u2019s capital, politicians ratcheted up the pressure and called in chits behind the scenes. Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia and state Senator Carol Alvarado, both of whom have spoken out about the shooting, campaigned hard for Whitmire in his hotly contested mayoral campaign against Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. We can assume Whitmire, known as dean of the Texas Senate for his longevity in the statehouse, understands the loan requirements of the political favor bank.<\/p>\n This combo of new and old could mark a tipping point in Latino power in Houston, made evident by the mayor\u2019s about-face\u2014oh, right, okay, we will have a transparent investigation with local input!\u2014and even the governor\u2019s declaration that the Texas Rangers will be conducting an independent investigation into Salgado\u2019s killing. (Though cynics have questioned how independent the investigation will be and pointed to the agency\u2019s checkered history<\/a>.) As my colleague Michael Hardy pointed out<\/a> this week, election and reelection campaigns are coming on fast, and if upsets in other states are any indication, no incumbent should feel too comfortable.<\/p>\n More important, though, the killing of Salgado, like that of Houstonian George Floyd<\/a> in Minneapolis, has held up a mirror to the rest of the city\u2014to show us who we are, not who we like to think we are. Houstonians put up with a lot on a daily basis\u2014bad roads, bad bugs, floods, a nearly unlivable climate for half the year\u2014but its diversity is a source of enormous pride. Since the Trump administration began its immigration purge, just about everyone knows someone who has been swept off the street or who lives in fear of it. Spreading that fear is the point, after all; the question is who will mitigate it for our neighbors, in public demonstrations and in private conference rooms from city hall to skyscrapers where C-suite executives run companies that depend on immigrant labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Salgado was like so many hardworking Houstonian immigrants. Every morning except his last was typical\u2014rounding up his crew to build houses, eating a lunch his wife had packed, traveling through a city that had long ago made clear that his undocumented status was not a problem because his labor was needed for that city to grow. In his 35 years in the U.S., Salgado, who ran a construction crew, probably paid more taxes than some high-ranking public officials. In exchange, his children had more economic opportunity, having been raised here and educated here. In the tidy, working-class neighborhood of Magnolia Park, where Salgado was killed and near where the family made their home, most of the houses are small but well maintained, with gardens out front. It\u2019s one of those places where everybody still knows everybody else\u2014and their grandparents and grandchildren, and who is having a quincea\u00f1era and who is graduating from college. Established around 1890, it\u2019s one of Houston\u2019s oldest<\/a> Latino neighborhoods. Yet Magnolia Park remains terra incognita to many Houstonians, just one indication that \u201cotherness\u201d still lingers for many Latinos here.<\/p>\n A few days before the council meeting, on Saturday, a now all-too-familiar homemade memorial sprang up at the spot where Salgado was shot on Canal Street, a main thoroughfare of Houston\u2019s East End. In front of a frame house converted into a barbershop, mourners left cellophane-wrapped bouquets, votive candles, and handwritten signs in English and Spanish. \u201cYou can\u2019t love our culture but hate our people,\u201d read one.\u00a0<\/p>\n A younger, overwhelmingly Latino crowd milled about while an impromptu cortege cruised by in everything from Land Rovers to lowriders. Suddenly a small older woman stepped in front of the gathering crowd. Her graying, henna-shaded hair was pulled into a tight bun, her cheekbones so high and sharp they seemed struggling to escape her luminous brown skin. \u201cWho remembers Jos\u00e9 Campos Torres?\u201d she asked, referring to the American citizen and Army veteran<\/a> beaten and left to drown in Buffalo Bayou by several Houston police officers in 1977. Only a handful of people raised their hands; most of those in the crowd hadn\u2019t even been born then.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was my brother,\u201d Janie Torres continued, and for the next twenty minutes or so, she acted as both a modern-day Cassandra and living proof of the lingering effects of trauma on a family. \u201cThe government did nothing,\u201d she said, an indictment that encompassed local officials and even the largely ineffective Justice Department investigation. It was Torres\u2019s martyrdom that galvanized his own community and made for more opportunity, more power, and more safety for its residents, documented or not.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a shame and a stain that Houston finds itself here again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Read Next<\/p>\n ![\"Protesters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lorenzo-salgado-araujo-jose-campos-torres.jpg\")
Protesters marching outside a Harris County court building on May 18, 1977, to protest the killing of Jos\u00e9 Campos Torres.Curtis McGee\/Houston Chronicle via Getty<\/p>\n