told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\nCNN has contacted DHS and the family\u2019s attorney for comment on the US attorney\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
ICE initially said Salgado Araujo \u201crammed into an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,\u201d leading to \u201cour officer firing his weapon in self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reitz\u2019s statement Thursday does not mention vehicle ramming.<\/p>\n
Men who were in Salgado Araujo\u2019s work van say ICE\u2019s version of events was false, attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said. Two of the men told Garcia the agents\u2019 vehicles bumped into them and then swayed into the van, forcing them to stop.<\/p>\n
The agents never identified themselves to the men, they told Garcia.<\/p>\n
The men told Garcia agents had exited their vehicles and run toward the van, she told CNN. They pulled out the passengers as one of the agents fired one shot at Salgado Araujo, she said they told her.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t clear to Salgado Araujo\u2019s brother that they were ICE agents until after the shot was fired and he saw the word \u201cICE\u201d on the lanyard of the agent pulling him out of the vehicle, Powers told CNN on Friday.<\/p>\n
The three passengers were detained, according to his family. Details on whether any of the three were intended targets of the traffic stop, and exact details about their immigration status, weren\u2019t immediately available.<\/p>\n
But Teare\u2019s office certified requests for U visas for the three. Such visas allow foreign nationals without any official status in the US to stay in the country in certain circumstances when they\u2019re witnesses to alleged crimes. The office regularly certifies U visa requests for material witnesses, a spokesperson with Teare\u2019s office told CNN on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Powers is calling for her client to be released so he can grieve with his family and provide testimony about what he witnessed the day his brother was fatally shot.<\/p>\n
The assistant district attorney visited Salgado Araujo’s brother last week, but he hasn\u2019t been interviewed since, she told CNN on Friday.<\/p>\n
The DHS Office of the Inspector General is leading an investigation into the shooting, according to ICE. And the Texas Department of Public Safety\u2019s Texas Rangers said Wednesday it would investigate the shooting alongside the OIG and the FBI, and that it \u201cwill have access to all available evidence\u201d collected by the federal agencies.<\/p>\n
The ACLU of Texas, which is working closely with Salgado Araujo\u2019s family, said, \u201cThe Trump administration lacks credibility to investigate itself, and we should be skeptical of any claims until a full independent investigation is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris County district attorney\u2019s office is pursuing its own investigation, \u201clooking directly at the actions of that agent, and when we get to the end \u2026 we will make a charging decision,\u201d Teare said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Salgado Araujo was living in the U.S. without legal permission, ICE said. He had lived in the U.S. for nearly 35 years, raising three sons with his wife and building homes in the Houston suburbs, one of his sons told reporters. He submitted an application for a work permit and was \u201cclose to obtaining his legal status,\u201d the son said.<\/p>\n
DA questions warrant\u2019s unsealing<\/p>\n
Teare, the district attorney, said Thursday he was concerned about the motives for the warrant\u2019s unsealing. While not unheard of, it is unusual for an FBI search warrant to be publicly available during an active and high-profile investigation of this nature.<\/p>\n
The federal court docket appears to show the warrant was initially sealed when it was filed Tuesday, shielding its contents from public view, but it was later unsealed. The filing came two days before a public viewing for Salgado Araujo, and three days before his funeral.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement had not searched the vehicle prior to filing the warrant, McNielly wrote.<\/p>\n
The Harris County District Attorney\u2019s Office was allowed to be present during the search warrant execution, but Teare said local law enforcement hasn\u2019t been able to \u201cforensically download\u201d the van, which is a more critical piece of information.<\/p>\n
Teare said the investigators conducting the search warrant appeared focused on retrieving the baggies from the van, adding they didn\u2019t ask to get the vehicle\u2019s crash recorder data, which \u201cwould have shown steering input, speed, braking for up to 15 seconds before the incident,\u201d and didn\u2019t ask to test the van for DNA to confirm who had touched the outside.<\/p>\n
CNN has reached out to the FBI and U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office about Teare\u2019s comments on the search warrant.<\/p>\n
To date, the Department of Homeland Security has not indicated that the ICE agents who stopped Salgado Araujo had any knowledge of drugs possibly being inside the vehicle at the time of the fatal shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cA search warrant does not equate to guilt. An unidentified substance is not a confirmed narcotic. We are requesting that the substance testing be expedited so that their names can be cleared. But no test result, whatever it ultimately shows, will change the fact that deadly force was used against Lorenzo. You cannot shoot first and ask questions later,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n
The medical examiner ruled that Salgado Araujo\u2019s death was caused by a gunshot to the torso, and officials have not released toxicology information describing any substances in his system at the time of death.<\/p>\n
Teare is concerned \u201cthat the federal government is going to try to use the fact that they believe narcotics \u2026 was present in the car to try to remove (the passengers in Salgado Araujo\u2019s van) from the country, which is one of the reasons that we\u2019ve already certified that all three of those individuals are material witnesses in a death investigation,\u201d Teare said Thursday.<\/p>\n
While the FBI has been \u201cforthcoming and collaborative\u201d with local law enforcement, DHS has been a \u201cblack box,\u201d Teare said Friday.<\/p>\n
But with or without their cooperation, Teare said: \u201cAt the end of this, we\u2019re going to be able to present this case to a grand jury and see what criminal charges are appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN has asked the Department of Justice for comment on the allegations in the warrant, why the warrant information was made public, and whether it was unsealed at the request of federal prosecutors. CNN has not yet received a response.<\/p>\n
The president of the LULAC Adelante PAC, a political group that supports Latino voter participation and candidates, accused federal investigators of trying to \u201cchange the public discourse and prejudice a jury in Harris County.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just smells of a smear campaign and a cover-up,\u201d Domingo Garcia said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
_______<\/p>\n
CNN\u2019s Josh Campbell, Holmes Lybrand, Ashley Killough and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Family believes substance in Houston ICE shooting van is salt, attorney says, countering FBI suspicion of drugs A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[294,117054,134412,134409,117055,134413,3646,74296,132740,53681,134405,134406,134414,405,134407,134415,56,58,129692,57,1829,129375,51435,1724,1154,1830,21712,48,129319,21759,112330,112331,287,112326,134411,134410,22162,27,429,6433,132741,112329,120985,134408,108295],"class_list":["post-380496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-crime","tag-demand-menu-subscribe","tag-dhs-office-of-inspector-general","tag-electrolyte-mix","tag-email-weather-search","tag-fatal-traffic-stop","tag-fbi","tag-fbi-investigation","tag-fbi-warrant","tag-federal-investigation","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-granulated-salt","tag-harris-county","tag-harris-county-da","tag-homemade-electrolyte-mix","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-ice-shooting","tag-houston-news","tag-ice","tag-ice-agent-shooting","tag-ice-shooting","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-crackdown","tag-immigration-enforcement","tag-jsnd","tag-law","tag-lorenzo-salgado-araujo","tag-maine","tag-nowcast","tag-page","tag-politics","tag-privacy-notice-term","tag-ruby-powers","tag-salt-mistaken-for-drugs","tag-sean-teare","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-true-crime","tag-u-visa","tag-use-nextfre","tag-weekday-news-watch","tag-white-crystal-substance","tag-wjcl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380496","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=380496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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