HOUSTON — Federal immigration authorities are declining to identify the ICE officer who fatally shot a Mexican man during a traffic stop in Houston, and questions surrounding the incident are mounting — particularly after officials acknowledged the victim was not the person they were actually pursuing.
The killing has reignited criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement approach, coming at a time when ICE arrests across the country climbed to 10,000 over a five-day stretch, driven in part by large-scale Congressional funding.
The Department of Homeland Security says that early Tuesday, officers were chasing a white van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo when he rammed an ICE vehicle, prompting an officer to open fire in self-defense. But so far, no evidence has surfaced to back up that account.
Three men who were passengers in the van have told an attorney that officers are not telling the truth about what occurred, saying Salgado Araujo never struck an ICE vehicle and that he was shot through the passenger-side window instead.
The officers involved were not equipped with body cameras, and neither ICE nor DHS has made any photos, video footage, or other physical evidence from the scene available to the public.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia confirmed that Salgado Araujo — a 52-year-old homebuilder who was on his way to a construction job with his crew when he was shot — was not the individual ICE had been looking for. His family said he had lived in the United States for more than 35 years, had no criminal history, and was nearly finished with the lengthy process of obtaining legal immigration status at the time of his death.
ICE took the other three men in the van into custody. Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, who said he has spoken with them, described the DHS version of events as “completely false.”
“At no point did they ever use the van to ram into the ICE agents and at no point were these ICE agents lives ever in danger,” Balderas-Ibarra said in an Instagram post.
One of the men detained is Salgado Araujo’s brother. ICE has not released their names, though family members say they have been allowed brief contact with them.
ICE is reportedly pressuring the detained men to voluntarily leave the country, a move that could limit their ability to share their accounts with investigators. One of the men, Daniel Tirado Pantoja, does not have legal immigration status but has no criminal record, according to his stepdaughter.
“We just told him not to sign anything, that we’re going to fight this case,” his stepdaughter Juana Degollado told the Associated Press.
DHS called those allegations “categorically false.”
When asked Thursday whether officers had specifically targeted Salgado Araujo, DHS said that weeks before the shooting, investigators received a tip and observed two white vans at a target’s address. On the day of the shooting, officers spotted a white van and someone inside who they believed resembled the person they were seeking, the department said.
DHS said it will not name the officer involved, citing concerns that doing so could put the officer and their family at risk of threats or violence.
The department has also declined to answer questions about how long the officer has been employed by ICE or whether anyone involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave. This approach is consistent with how DHS has handled previous fatal shootings involving its officers — a stance that stands in contrast to many state and local agencies that routinely release details about officers involved in serious incidents.
Unlike some past cases involving federal immigration officers, very little visual evidence from the scene has become publicly available in the days following Salgado Araujo’s death.
The League of United Latin American Citizens announced a $5,000 reward for any video or other evidence from the scene. However, officials said the positioning of the vehicles meant that nearby surveillance cameras did not capture the shooting.
