The men who witnessed the killing of a 52-year-old father of three children in Houston by a federal immigration officer are disputing the Trump administration’s narrative of the fatal shooting on the streets of Houston.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an undocumented Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. for 35 years, was not the intended target of a traffic stop that led to his death on Tuesday morning, officials now say. The witnesses in the car with him — Salgado Araujo’s brother and two of their coworkers — were also reportedly not the targets of the stop.
The men, the only known witnesses to the shooting, say immigration authorities are now pressuring them to sign deportation orders to leave the country.
Hours after his death, Homeland Security claimed Salgado Araujo tried to “evade arrest” and “weaponized his vehicle” in an attempt to “run over” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who then fired “in self-defense.” But none of the officers involved in the operation were wearing body-worn cameras at the time, according to Homeland Security.
Witness accounts and statements from Salgado Araujo’s family members and lawyers representing them are throwing into question the official account from the Trump administration, which has seen at least 10 people killed by immigration agents as the president accelerates a mass deportation campaign.
Salgado Araujo had a small construction business and was working on obtaining legal status, according to his family.
After having breakfast with his wife early Tuesday morning, Salgado Arauja picked up his coworkers in his van before heading to a construction site. The men, who are undocumented, have each lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and do not have a criminal record, according to an attorney representing them.
Around 6:30 a.m., after picking up ice and water, they pulled up to a stop light when an unmarked vehicle started following them, the men told The Washington Post in statements through an attorney.
When the light turned green, the unmarked car pulled onto the shoulder and accelerated to cut in front of Salgado Araujo, who was driving.
The unmarked car hit its brakes, and Salgado Araujo made a U-turn, the witnesses said. Officers then hit their police lights.
With heavy construction on the road ahead of him, Salgado Araujo was driving slowly, at no more than 5 mph, when ICE agents rammed their vehicles into his van, according to the men.
Salgado Araujo did use his van to hit them, they said.
Shortly after the shooting, Homeland Security released a statement saying Salgado Araujo “weaponized” his van “in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”
“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas wrote in a handwritten statement to an attorney speaking to The Washington Post.
“It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over,” he added. “There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra told the newspaper that all three men, who are not being detained together in ICE custody, recounted the events similarly.
“All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.”
With ICE vehicles on either side of the van, an officer jumped out of one of the vehicles and ran toward them while shouting “stop!” — then immediately started firing, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to the men who witnessed the shooting.
“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” his brother Victor Salgado told Balderas-Ibarra, according to The Washington Post. Victor Salgado was in the passenger seat, he said.
Officers surrounded the van and pulled Salgado Araujo to the ground and handcuffed the hands and feet of the other men in the van, they said.
Bystander video of the encounter, which does not show the shooting itself, shows several men lying face down on the ground along with Salgado Araujo while two officers crouch over him and radio for help.
Salgado Araujo, who was shot in the abdomen, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In a statement to The Independent, Homeland Security said the agency’s Office of Inspector General was leading an investigation into the shooting while the FBI’s Houston office is leading a probe “into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
Homeland Security does not intend to publicly reveal the name of the officer who fatally shot Salgado Araujo.
“We will do the right thing based on the findings of the investigation,” White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News on Friday.
