By Arathy Somasekhar, Evan Garcia and Nathan Crooks
HOUSTON, July 8 (Reuters) – Hundreds of protesters assembled on Wednesday at the spot where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man driving to work a day earlier, the latest in a spate of deadly encounters involving expanded deportation raids nationwide.
The chanting demonstrators, many displaying Mexican flags and carrying signs that read, “Stand with immigrants” and “ICE out of Houston,” echoed mounting demands for an independent inquiry into Tuesday’s shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally.
A contingent of police officers, some on horseback with helmets and riot gear, closed off surrounding streets to traffic and moved around the perimeter of the rally, which was boisterous but peaceful.
“It’s not right. The people shouldn’t be attacked the way that they are. Everything that’s going on is wrong,” Jose Valles, 51, who lives about a two-minute drive from the scene, said minutes before the crowd began marching to a nearby park.
The killing of 52-year-old Salgado, a construction worker who according to family had resided in Houston for over three decades and was close to obtaining legal U.S. residency, brought to at least six the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations.
That crackdown has recently gained new momentum in cities across the country, with federal agents detaining around 2,000 migrants a day nationwide last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
In Houston alone, home to a large and deeply rooted Mexican immigrant community, the number of ICE arrests per week more than tripled from mid-June to late June — to around 100 — according to preliminary data shared with Reuters by a source.
In a statement issued Tuesday after the fatal shooting, ICE said that Salgado rammed his van into an ICE vehicle, refused to obey multiple verbal commands and tried to run over an officer, who then fired on him in “self-defense.”
Salgado was a Mexican national living illegally in the United States and was caught up in a “targeted enforcement operation” when ICE officers tried to stop his vehicle, the agency said.
Reuters could not verify the man’s immigration status or the circumstances of the shooting in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End neighborhood.
‘OPEN SEASON ON LATINOS’
At a Wednesday news conference, Salgado’s son Ronaldo described his father as a peaceful man who had spent the past 35 years in the country as a construction worker.
“He dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream,” Ronaldo said, adding that he had been working to get his legal immigration status and was close to securing it.
Salgado was on his way to pick up his construction crew en route to a work site in north Houston, according to family.
Flanked by several members of Congress, leaders of Latino advocacy groups and Houston officials, Ronaldo called for “a full investigation” into his father’s killing.
He only learned about what had happened after seeing a video posted on social media, Ronaldo said, showing his father on the ground next to his white van.
“I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out,” he said, choking back tears.
“It is un-American to use a fatal force against a human being, then lock away the evidence,” Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the press conference. “For too long, we have watched an open season declared on Latinos, and communities of color, under the guise of public safety.”
DISPUTE OVER INVESTIGATION
ICE said on Tuesday that its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would lead an investigation into the shooting, while the FBI would spearhead an inquiry into the “potential assault on a law enforcement officer.”
But many in this city were unwilling to wait for a federal probe: “I am calling for an immediate and impartial investigation, with all available video and findings released as soon as possible,” Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council member, wrote in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday.
U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Texas Democrat who represents the neighborhood where the shooting took place, made a similar appeal.
“We need independent investigations, we need body cameras, clear identification, no masks and an end to paramilitary-style immigration enforcement in our streets,” Garcia said at the press conference.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, speaking at a City Council meeting on Wednesday, called for a “transparent, independent” investigation, but ruled out a city-led inquiry, saying there “could not be two ongoing investigations.”
The case has already made waves across the border in Mexico.
In a news briefing on Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was preparing legal measures after “another unfortunate death” of a Mexican national whose “only fault was not having legal papers yet.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, no video had emerged of the shooting itself. The Trump administration has been slow to advance efforts to expand the use of body cameras by immigration officers and sharply cut oversight staffing last year as it surged officers into cities across the nation.
Initial accounts from federal agencies about their use of force have often been challenged by video footage or other evidence.
Trump administration officials also said that two U.S. citizens shot dead by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, had threatened bodily harm to the agents before they were killed — despite apparently contradictory video evidence.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Nathan Crooks in Houston, and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Writing by Brad Brooks and Steve Gorman; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage, Alistair Bell and Michael Perry)
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