Witnesses who were inside the van with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo when he was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent have contradicted the government's account of the incident, according to their attorney. Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, representing two of the three passengers, stated in a video posted to Instagram that the ICE agents' version of events is “completely false.”
Witnesses Deny Ramming or Endangering Agents
“After speaking with these three men that were in the vehicle with Lorenzo, I have no doubt that what these ICE agents are saying is completely false,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “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 any danger.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had claimed that the ICE agent acted in “self-defense” after Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle” and “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” ICE and DHS have a history of providing false accounts regarding individuals shot by agents.
Inconsistencies in Official Statements
Balderas-Ibarra emphasized that the agents' accounts are inconsistent with the recollections of the three witnesses. He relayed that after being shot, Salgado Araujo, a father of three, said “ya me mataron” — roughly translating to “now they’ve killed me.”
In a handwritten statement shared with The Washington Post, Jose Trinidad Rojas, one of the passengers, wrote that the DHS statement “is a lie.” The statement continued, “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over, as there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
Witnesses Describe Ambush from the Sides
According to Balderas-Ibarra, the other two witnesses — Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor Salgado — gave the same account. “All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” the attorney told the Post. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.”
The witnesses described an unmarked vehicle following Salgado Araujo’s van on Tuesday morning, then cutting it off in traffic. Salgado Araujo made a U-turn, and the vehicle turned on its police lights. Due to construction, Salgado Araujo was driving slowly when ICE vehicles rammed his work van. “Lorenzo thought we had lost them but suddenly they surrounded us,” Rojas wrote.
An officer then jumped out from one of the vehicles, ran toward them from the side, and yelled, “Stop!” He started firing from the passenger side of the van, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen. Victor Salgado, sitting in the passenger seat, said, “When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” according to Balderas-Ibarra’s interview notes. Even after Salgado Araujo put the van into park, the shots continued.
Mocking and Detention of Witnesses
“It just happened so fast,” Salgado told Balderas-Ibarra. He recalled an ICE agent saying mockingly: “Se querían escapar, verdad?” (“You wanted to escape, right?”)
At a press conference on Friday alongside elected officials, Balderas-Ibarra stated that the men “confirmed that at no point was there ever an ICE agent directly in front of the vehicle. They also confirmed that the shots came from the sides, not from the front, which is inconsistent with the ICE agents’ statement.” He later hedged slightly, noting that one witness thought the shots came from the side but that it had not been verified.
“All three of my clients reiterated that at no point was there ever an agent standing in front of the vehicle, nor was an agent ever placed in the line of danger,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “That is simply false, and I believe my clients are telling the truth.”
Balderas-Ibarra represents Rojas and Tirado, who are being held at ICE’s Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas. Neither ICE nor DHS responded to HuffPost’s questions.
