Three men who witnessed an ICE officer fatally shoot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on Tuesday are currently in immigration custody and being pressured to sign voluntary departure orders, according to a representative of their families. The development has raised concerns about a potential cover-up of the incident.
Witnesses in Custody
The men — Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the deceased's brother, as well as Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego — were in the same work vehicle as Salgado Araujo when an ICE officer opened fire, killing him, said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to HuffPost on Thursday. Proaño was speaking on behalf of the families of the three men.
“We’ve been in contact with the families of the men” who were in the vehicle at the time of the shooting, Proaño said. “We know specifically that they have been pressured to sign self-deportation orders.” Worryingly, the men do not yet have legal representation and seem inclined to sign the voluntary departure orders, he added.
Efforts to Secure Legal Representation
“We’re working really, really hard to see if we can find representation for them — and to make sure that we can get their witness statements, their accounts of what actually happened,” Proaño said. He previously characterized the situation to The New Republic as seemingly “an effort by DHS to get rid of the only eyewitnesses to what happened.”
“They’re currently in detention,” he said. “These men hold the key to what actually happened.” Self-deportation is a colloquial expression referring to voluntary departure from the country and the abandonment of any legal efforts to avoid deportation. The Trump administration has pressured thousands of people to self-deport by leveraging the misery of immigration detention.
Civil Rights Leaders Demand Transparency
Another civil rights leader on Thursday similarly relayed reports of pressure on the other men in Salgado Araujo’s vehicle to self-deport from custody. “What we fear is that this is another effort from ICE to cover up something that they did very, very wrong,” said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of the civil rights organization FIEL Houston, to Democracy Now!. It is unclear whether Espinosa had spoken directly to the family members of the detained men or was relaying others’ reports.
At a press conference Wednesday, Salgado Araujo’s family and community advocates called for full transparency from the Trump administration, as well as an independent investigation of the shooting. Salgado Araujo’s eldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, said that his father had been prepared for the possibility of being stopped by ICE personnel given recent immigration enforcement activity in the area. Salgado said his family, including his father, had “so many conversations” about what to do if approached by immigration officers: He would not sign anything, and would instead work from detention with family and lawyers to secure his legal release.
Family Questions ICE's Account
Salgado also said unmarked cars had been following his father, and that, had he seen a sign that they were law enforcement, “my father would have complied — he would have stopped, he would have not run away.” Salgado suggested his father may have been afraid of being robbed by the people driving the vehicles. “ICE did not present themselves to him in an orderly manner,” he said.
Ronaldo Salgado described his father as a “hard-working family man” at the press conference, as well as a “man of routine.” Salgado Araujo was in the process of applying for a work permit when he was killed and had recently been fingerprinted as part of the process, his son said.
DHS Claims Self-Defense Without Evidence
In the Department of Homeland Security’s telling, ICE officers on Tuesday “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop” of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who then “attempted to evade arrest.” Citing “information we are receiving,” the department’s statement then said that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle” and “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” The statement also said the DHS inspector general’s office was leading an investigation into the “agent-involved shooting,” and that “FBI Houston is leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
In a statement to HuffPost, an unnamed ICE spokesperson repeated DHS’ statement, referring HuffPost to the FBI for additional questions. The FBI’s Houston field office did not immediately reply to a request for comment. DHS has not released any evidence to back up its version of events.
LULAC Skeptical of Government's Account
Proaño told HuffPost that LULAC has not yet seen any videos that directly showed the shooting. However, DHS has a lengthy record of lying about the people ICE officers have shot — including Marimar Martinez and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The ICE officer who shot Sosa-Celis, Christian Castro, currently faces charges in Minnesota of second-degree assault and falsely reporting a crime for allegedly shooting Sosa-Celis then lying about the circumstances of the incident. The government initially alleged that Sosa-Celis and another man, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, attacked law enforcement with a shovel before the shooting — but video later showed that this did not happen.
“We don’t believe DHS,” Proaño told HuffPost. “We don’t believe ICE.”
