Houston neighborhood looks for answers after fatal ICE shooting
HOUSTON — Jorge Gonzalez woke up shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday when the phone rang. His next door neighbor asked his wife, from the other end of the line: Did you hear the gunshots?
Gonzalez, a longtime resident of Houston’s predominantly Latino Magnolia Park, sprang up from bed. He wove through the 88-year-old bungalow he and his wife share on Canal Street, out to the front yard, where a chain-link fence separates the rain-drenched grass from the street. There, he told Straight Arrow, several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents combed through the grass on his curb, looking for shell casings.
A couple of dozen yards to the west, a man was dead. An ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican national during an attempted vehicle stop in Houston on Tuesday morning, the agency said.
ICE identified the man as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and said he was in the U.S. illegally. The agency said officers were conducting a targeted enforcement operation to arrest him at about 6:50 a.m. CT.
An ICE spokesperson told Straight Arrow that Salgado Araujo tried to evade arrest, rammed an ICE vehicle, ignored multiple verbal commands and “weaponized his vehicle” while trying to run over an officer. ICE said the officer fired in self-defense.
The agency said emergency responders took Salgado Araujo to a hospital, where he died from his injuries.
Calls for investigations
The shooting has prompted calls for answers as investigators review ICE’s account and federal immigration officers face scrutiny over multiple shootings tied to vehicle stops during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.
Tuesday’s shooting appears to be the first fatal shooting involving federal immigration officers since separate incidents in Minneapolis in January left two U.S. citizens dead. The Wall Street Journal reported that immigration agents have fired at or into civilian vehicles at least a dozen times over the past year, killing at least two people, including Renee Good in Minneapolis.
ICE said emergency services were called immediately after the Houston shooting. The agency said the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is leading an investigation into the shooting, while the FBI’s Houston office is investigating the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, whose district includes the area where the shooting happened, called for all footage and evidence to be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation.
Garcia said Salgado Araujo’s family, her constituents and the community “deserve a complete and transparent accounting of what happened.”
‘My father did not deserve this’
The League of United Latin American Citizens called for an independent investigation and a full release of documents generated by the investigation.
Salgado Araujo’s family described him as a “hardworking Mexican man.”
“My father has been in this country for nearly 35 years, working in construction to provide for myself, my two brothers and my mother,” his son, Ronaldo Salgado, said on social media. “He was in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process. He was on his way to work, picking up his workers.”
“My father did not deserve this,” he said on social media.
LULAC announced a $5,000 reward for information about the shooting.
“We cannot accept bloodshed on American streets without accountability,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said, according to The Journal.
‘Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!’
The shooting happened in Magnolia Park, a historic neighborhood in Houston’s East End, where the majority of residents are Latino immigrants or first- or second-generation Americans.
Gonzalez, who lives a few houses from the scene, told Straight Arrow he came outside after his wife woke him and saw ICE agents and Houston police officers throughout the area.
“What are y’all doing, man?” Gonzalez said he asked agents as they searched near his chain-link fence. “What’s up? What’s going on?”
“They said it’s still under investigation,” Gonzalez told Straight Arrow. “What is under investigation?”
Then, he said, he saw a white van with its doors open and “like two, three guys already” in handcuffs. He said he also heard a woman nearby yelling, “Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!”
Gonzalez said he has seen ICE activity near the neighborhood before, including near gas stations and businesses. He said white work vans have become a familiar target in the area.
“When they see Mexicans driving a van like that … and they see a lot of workers,” Gonzalez said.
Mourning a neighbor
By Tuesday evening, neighbors, mourners and protesters had gathered near the scene.
“People are mad,” Gonzalez said. “They were protesting, man. They were in the rain.”
Gonzalez said he believes agents could have arrested Salgado Araujo without using deadly force.
“They should have just handcuffed him,” he said. “They shouldn’t have killed him.”
Houston resident Patricia Cruz and her sister were driving to the park for their regular morning walk on Wednesday when they spotted a cluster of ICE agents in the parking lot of a Church’s Chicken. The pair, who grew up in Houston’s East End and attended Stephen F. Austin High School on Lockwood Drive just a couple miles from the shooting, drove to the barbershop where Cruz knew media would be stationed.
“We need to notify them, so they can tell people what’s going on,” she told her sister.
Cruz, a U.S. citizen, wanted to warn her neighbors to prepare for another day of enforcement. She said ICE has stopped her family in the past.
“That’s why I always carry a camera with me,” Cruz said. “Because it’s your word against mine.”
Every one of her neighbors should keep a camera in their car, Cruz said.
“I feel like we’re harassed because we’re Hispanic,” she said. “And they think we’re all wrong and evil, which we’re not.”
She told Straight Arrow she will attend a vigil planned for Wednesday evening, in front of the site of Tuesday’s shooting.
“People need to be aware and come together, and if they see anything — I’m not going to say get involved, but record as much as you can,” she said.
The neighborhood can’t change what happened on Tuesday, she said, but neighbors can band together for healing and action.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
