Hundreds of protesters have rallied in Houston in the US state of Texas to demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent this month.<\/p>\n
Protesters marched from Ervan Chew Park on Sunday and briefly shut down a bridge on Dunlavy Street, according to local media and videos posted online. They held banners that read, \u201cAbolish ICE\u201d and \u201cJustice for Lorenzo\u201d.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, was fatally shot by an ICE agent on July 7 while he was driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston. The protests came amid mounting scrutiny of United States President Donald Trump\u2019s aggressive immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
According to The Associated Press news agency, encounters with ICE and other immigration agents have resulted in at least 10 deaths since the start of Trump\u2019s second term in January last year. Two of those happened in the days after Salgado Araujo\u2019s killing in the states of Maine and Florida.<\/p>\n
After the shooting in Houston, ICE claimed Salgado Araujo had used his vehicle to try to ram an agent who fired his weapon in self-defence. But witnesses contradicted ICE\u2019s version of events, and a statement issued on Thursday by the US attorney for the Southern District of Texas made no mention of any collision between Salgado Araujo\u2019s van and a law enforcement vehicle nor did it explicitly state that the officer feared for his life.<\/p>\n
In a video posted online by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a campaign group, an activist at Sunday\u2019s march called for further protests to shut down the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to show ICE, the Trump administration and the entire country that the city of Houston is not to be messed with,\u201d the protester said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot just sit here and let ICE hunt and murder more of our daughters, our brothers, our uncles. If we want justice, we have to demand it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The activist said the \u201cshutdown\u201d of Houston, the fourth largest city in the US, will take place on Friday.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s protest followed similar rallies held across the country on Saturday, including in Portland, Maine, where, on July 13, Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in nearby Biddeford.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Duran Guerrero\u2019s family paid tribute to the father of a three-year-old girl, telling the Telemundo news network that he still had \u201cmany dreams to fulfil\u201d.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have demanded an investigation into ICE\u2019s hiring practices after it was alleged that the officer responsible for Duran Guerrero\u2019s killing had a history of mental health issues<\/a> and had subjected his ex-wife to violent and threatening behaviour.<\/p>\n Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi congressman and the top Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security in the US House of Representatives, told AP that the officer\u2019s alleged violent history \u201cdirectly call[s] into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits\u201d.<\/p>\n After the killings, the Trump administration\u2019s top immigration enforcement official, Tom Homan, said the agency would start a \u201cshort pause\u201d on traffic stops. And on Sunday, he announced ICE will now require at least one agent to wear a body camera during vehicle stops.<\/p>\n \u201cI want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,\u201d he told the Fox & Friends Weekend programme on the Fox News network.<\/p>\n