A Mexican immigrant shot and killed by federal immigration agents during a traffic stop in Houston this week was not the person they were trying to arrest, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged on Thursday.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 35 years in the country, died after being shot in the abdomen during the encounter on Tuesday morning. He was driving a white van to work with three other passengers when ICE agents stopped him, mistaking him for someone else entirely.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had been hunting two men from Guatemala. When they spotted Salgado Araujo's white van near a target address, they moved in. A DHS official said agents had received a law enforcement tip about the suspects' location and had previously observed white vans at that property.
"On July 7, officers were almost at the target's address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target," the unnamed official told the Guardian.
What unfolded next remains disputed. ICE agents claimed Salgado Araujo "weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over" an officer, who fired "in self-defense." The agency offered no video or corroborating evidence for that account.
No body cameras were worn by the officers involved, DHS said.
The three other people in the van were taken into custody. One has been identified as Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the victim's brother, who remains in immigration detention.
Salgado Araujo's son, Ronaldo Salgado, expressed fury at a press conference Wednesday. "He did not deserve to die," he said. "This is ridiculous to hear that no one in that van was a target of any sort of investigation."
The incident mirrors a troubling pattern. ICE has invoked the same self-defense justification in other high-profile fatal shootings, including the 2024 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the shooting of two Venezuelan men in Oregon earlier this year. Video evidence later contradicted the agency's accounts in both cases.
The shooting marks the tenth fatal encounter between federal immigration officers and civilians nationwide since the second Trump administration took office, according to a Guardian review of public records.
The DHS inspector general's office will investigate Salgado Araujo's death.
Author James Rodriguez: "An innocent man dead because agents couldn't tell the difference between people, and the agency's standard defense crumbles under scrutiny every time, yet keeps getting used anyway."
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