{"id":388471,"date":"2026-07-28T01:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388471\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T01:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:29:12","slug":"judge-orders-release-of-key-witness-in-houston-ice-shooting-within-48-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388471\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge orders release of key witness in Houston ICE shooting within 48 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">HOUSTON, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; A federal judge is ordering the release of one of the key witnesses in the deadly shooting of a Houston man by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego is one of only a few known witnesses because the ICE agents involved had no body or dash cameras.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The judge says Rojas Pliego must be released from immigration detention within 48 hours \u2014 in a public place \u2014 and his attorneys must be notified at least three hours beforehand. Court records say he\u2019s lived in the U.S. since 1998, has no criminal record, and has U.S.-citizen children and stepchildren. He and another passenger dispute the federal account, saying agents rammed the van before the shooting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to requests for comment. Two other witnesses have filed similar petitions seeking release.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Texas Tribune has more information on this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/07\/27\/texas-houston-ice-shooting-witness-release\/?utm_source=thetexastribune.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=breaking-news-witness-to-houston-ice-shooting-must-be-released-from-immigration-detention-judge-orders&amp;_bhlid=60aaafcf6ebc9a6ee44a1d744c20e62fb1e70074\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/07\/27\/texas-houston-ice-shooting-witness-release\/?utm_source=thetexastribune.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=breaking-news-witness-to-houston-ice-shooting-must-be-released-from-immigration-detention-judge-orders&amp;_bhlid=60aaafcf6ebc9a6ee44a1d744c20e62fb1e70074\">developing story here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; A federal judge is ordering the release of one of the key witnesses in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-388471","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\/388471","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=388471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}