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A federal immigration agent fatally shot a driver in Houston on Tuesday morning, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has said.
Agents stopped Lorenzo Salgado Araujo at around ۶.۵۰am and tried to arrest him, according to ICE, which described Salgado Araujo as a Mexican national and an “illegal alien” whom the agency was seeking as part of a “targeted enforcement operation”.
His son, Ronaldo Salgado, told Telemundo Houston that his father had been out that morning looking for workers in the area. According to ICE, Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”. The confrontation resulted in “our officer firing his weapon in self-defense”.
The agency said that the FBI will be taking over the investigation of the case.
ICE did not provide any evidence corroborating its account, which echoes descriptions of other ICE shootings, including the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the shooting of two Venezuelan men in Oregon earlier this year. In those cases, the government descriptions of the incident were later contradicted by video evidence. In April, the federal government said a California man whom they fired upon during a traffic stop “weaponized his vehicle”, though no officers were hit by his car.
Salgado Araujo was shot in the abdomen, according to local law enforcement, and taken to a hospital, where he died.
The Texas Civil Rights Project condemned ICE’s use of force and raised questions about the agency’s statement on the shooting. “We demand full transparency, an independent investigation into the shooting and any use of racial profiling that led to it, and accountability for the use of deadly force. Our neighborhoods are not battlegrounds,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the civil rights group.
US representative Sylvia Garcia of Houston echoed the demand, saying that Salgado Araujo’s family and her constituents “deserve a complete and transparent accounting” of the shooting. “All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” she said.
Local reporters and eyewitnesses captured video of the shooting, though the Guardian has not yet verified the sourcing and content.
Reuters contributed reporting
