![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Joe-Moody-cropped-611x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Joe Moody<\/p>\nBy Joe Moody\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was seven years ago now, but it still feels like yesterday that 23 people were gunned down in El Paso because of how they looked. And today, as much as I\u2019m thinking about the 23 taken from us, I\u2019m also thinking of a 24th.<\/p>\n
Joe Moody<\/p>\n
Just a few weeks ago, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot to death by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lorenzo was an unarmed man with no criminal history who was killed on his way to work. Witnesses say ICE agents rammed his vehicle then opened fire \u2013 and that they were never in any danger from Lorenzo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The federal government has insisted on investigating itself and claimed no one had any of the body cameras ICE was given $20 million for. It has yet to provide any evidence to justify the shooting other than leaning into a lie that drugs were found in the vehicle afterwards. Testing revealed that was never true.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What happened in Houston was very different from what happened in El Paso, but it\u2019s on my mind because it came from the same place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the years since Aug. 3, 2019, I\u2019ve written and spoken repeatedly about the danger of the political rhetoric being used against immigrants and Mexican Americans. The murderer who drove to El Paso back then did it to stop what he called \u201cthe Hispanic invasion of Texas.\u201d His own manifesto and statements by his attorneys specifically talked about the political influences that drove him to pull the trigger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Politicized hate has only gotten worse since then. National and state voices have shamelessly turned to naked racism and dehumanization, and footage uncovered through recent lawsuits has shown ICE agents using racial slurs on the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder that immigration enforcement has turned into an unprofessional and brutal spectacle that\u2019s killed people across the country and led to thousands of detainees, including at camps in El Paso, suffering inhumane conditions that would\u2019ve once been unthinkable in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That can only happen when people aren\u2019t thought of as people. You don\u2019t shoot someone who\u2019s just going to work or going to Walmart unless you believe they\u2019re \u201cinvaders\u201d who are \u201cpoisoning our country\u201d or \u201cbringing drugs, bringing crime . . . rapists\u201d who\u2019ve been emptied out of prisons and mental institutions south of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taking personhood is what makes it possible to take lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I used to think these deaths would change people\u2019s hearts and minds, but I\u2019ve come to realize that lives mean nothing to those who don\u2019t recognize the humanity of the dead in the first place. They\u2019ll never see us if we don\u2019t make them. I know we can, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We saw how to do it right here in an El Paso courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n