Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was 52 when he left his house on a Tuesday morning in early January. He said goodbye to his dog, took the meal his wife had prepared, and headed out with three co-workers in his white van bound for a construction site. He never arrived.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers opened fire during what the Department of Homeland Security called a targeted enforcement operation. Salgado was killed. The three men with him were arrested.
His death represents the 10th fatal shooting by federal immigration officials since the second Trump administration took office, according to a Guardian review of public reports. ICE officers and Customs and Border Protection agents have been responsible for the killings, though not all occurred during active immigration enforcement. One shooting involved a CBP agent responding to gunfire at a border patrol station in Texas. Another involved an off-duty ICE officer in California.
The circumstances surrounding Salgado's shooting remain contested. DHS claims he weaponized his vehicle when officers attempted to stop and arrest the group. His family, local officials, and civil rights organizations have demanded an independent investigation, calling the government's account unreliable.
"He did not deserve to die," Salgado's son, Ronaldo, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The deaths mark a sharp escalation in immigration enforcement-related violence. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights calculated that 52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of Trump's second administration. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights has expressed alarm at the mounting toll.
Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, described the situation bluntly: "The deaths of people in immigration prisons has reached new terrifying levels. Twenty-one people have died in ICE detention this year alone, and now we are learning of yet another shooting death by an immigration agent on the streets of another US neighborhood."
Congress allocated $70 billion to ICE and CBP in legislation passed last month, Franzblau noted, "with no accountability for the violence they have brought to our communities."
Two of the highest-profile cases involved US citizens. In January, Renee Good was killed by an ICE officer in Minnesota, and Alex Pretti was shot by CBP agents. Both deaths sparked mass protests and renewed scrutiny of federal tactics.
A pattern has emerged in at least four shooting deaths, including Salgado's. The victims were driving vehicles when shot. Federal law enforcement is trained to move away from moving cars rather than fire at them. Yet from July 2025 to January 2026, the Wall Street Journal documented over a dozen instances of immigration officials shooting at people in vehicles.
In Good's case, DHS claimed she weaponized her vehicle. Video evidence released later contradicted the administration's statements.
A similar discrepancy surfaced in the March 2025 shooting of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez, a US citizen killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop. Officials claimed Martinez intentionally struck a federal agent, but video footage later revealed a more complicated scenario. Congressional representatives Robert Garcia and Greg Casar said the contradictions reflected "a troubling pattern in which official statements about the use of lethal force are later challenged by video footage, witness testimony, or subsequent investigations."
Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano, co-founder of Fight Against Federal Overreach, a coalition of district attorneys focused on federal accountability, laid out the stakes: "Anytime someone is killed by a federal law enforcement agent, federal authorities should legitimately investigate to see if that killing is criminal. The Trump administration has made it clear that this is a duty they have no interest in fulfilling."
Congressional Representative Sylvia Garcia and Texas state representative James Talarico called for independent investigations into Salgado's death. Talarico said previous incidents had shown "this agency cannot be trusted to report all the facts."
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said at a city council meeting that local officials lack jurisdiction over federal law enforcement but insisted on a "transparent, independent investigation" by federal authorities.
A 2024 investigation by the Trace, Business Insider, and Type Investigations using previously undisclosed public records found that between 2015 and 2021, ICE officers killed 23 people in shootings. The current rate suggests a significant acceleration.
Author James Rodriguez: "When the same excuse gets recycled after every shooting, and video footage keeps proving it wrong, families deserve more than federal investigators policing themselves."
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