By Arathy Somasekhar, Brad Brooks and Nathan Crooks
HOUSTON, July 8 (Reuters) – Demands mounted on Wednesday for an independent investigation into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer’s fatal shooting of a man driving to work in Houston on Tuesday, the latest in a string of deadly encounters involving federal agents.
The killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo brought to at least six the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations.
That crackdown has recently gained new momentum in cities across the country, with federal agents detaining around 2,000 migrants a day nationwide last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
In Houston alone, home to a large and deeply rooted Mexican immigrant community, the number of ICE arrests per week more than tripled from mid-June to late June — to around 100 — according to preliminary data shared with Reuters by a source.
In a statement issued Tuesday after the fatal shooting, ICE said that Salgado rammed his van into an ICE vehicle, refused to obey multiple verbal commands and tried to run over an officer, who then fired on him in “self-defense.”
Salgado was a Mexican national living illegally in the United States and was caught up in a “targeted enforcement operation” when ICE officers tried to stop his vehicle, the agency said.
Reuters could not verify the man’s immigration status or the circumstances of the shooting in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End neighborhood.
‘OPEN SEASON ON LATINOS’
At a Wednesday press conference, Salgado’s son, Ronaldo, described his father as a peaceful man who had spent the past 35 years in the country as a construction worker.
“He dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream,” Ronaldo said, adding that he had been working to get his legal immigration status and was close to securing it.
Salgado was on his way to pick up members of his construction crew en route to a work site in north Houston, according to family.
Flanked by several members of Congress, leaders of Latino advocacy groups and Houston officials, Ronaldo called for “a full investigation” into his father’s killing.
He only learned about what had happened after seeing a video posted on social media, Ronaldo said, showing his father on the ground next to his white van.
“I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out,” he said, choking back tears.
“It is un-American to use a fatal force against a human being, then lock away the evidence,” Roman Polares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the press conference. “For too long, we have watched an open season declared on Latinos, and communities of color, under the guise of public safety.”
An online LULAC petition for a transparent investigation had collected nearly 52,000 signatures by midday Wednesday.
DISPUTE OVER INVESTIGATION
ICE said on Tuesday that its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would lead an investigation into the shooting, while the FBI would spearhead an inquiry into the “potential assault on a law enforcement officer.”
But many in this city were unwilling to wait for a federal probe: “I am calling for an immediate and impartial investigation, with all available video and findings released as soon as possible,” Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council member, wrote in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday.
U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Texas Democrat who represents the neighborhood where the shooting took place, made a similar appeal.
“We need independent investigations, we need body cameras, clear identification, no masks and an end to paramilitary-style immigration enforcement in our streets,” Garcia said at the press conference.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, speaking at a City Council meeting on Wednesday, called for a “transparent, independent” investigation, but ruled out a city-led inquiry, saying there “could not be two ongoing investigations.”
Hundreds were expected to attend a vigil at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday evening, organizers said, and the case has already made waves across the border in Mexico.
In a press briefing Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was preparing legal measures after “another unfortunate death” of a Mexican national whose “only fault was not having legal papers yet.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, no video had emerged of the shooting itself. Trump’s administration has slow-walked efforts to expand the use of body cameras by immigration officers and sharply cut oversight staffing last year as it surged officers into cities across the nation.
Initial accounts from federal agencies about their use of force have often been challenged by video footage or other evidence.
Marimar Martinez, a Chicago-area woman, was accused in October of ramming law enforcement officers with her car. She was shot five times but survived. Charges against her were ultimately dropped and video evidence suggested that the agents might have caused the collision.
Trump administration officials also said that two U.S. citizens shot dead by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, had threatened bodily harm to the agents before they were killed — despite apparently contradictory video evidence.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Nathan Crooks in Houston, and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Writing by Brad Brooks and Steve Gorman; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Alistair Bell)
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