Never miss a story! The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter gives readers the most essential Texas news. Sign up for The Brief.

.wp-block-custom-everlit-iframe-embed{margin: 0 !important;}Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback.

The three men who were with a 52-year-old Houston man when he was fatally shot by an immigration agent earlier this week said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo never tried to run over anyone and that agents repeatedly fired into the vehicle from the side of the van, an attorney representing two of the men said during a news conference on Friday.

Hugo Balderas Ibarra, an immigration attorney representing two of the three men who were passengers in the van driven by Salgado Araujo, said he talked to the three men on Thursday at a detention center where they were being held for deportation.

“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. “That is simply false, and I believe my clients are telling the truth.”

@media ( min-width: 300px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-1{min-height: 100px;}}@media ( min-width: 970px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-1{min-height: 100px;}}

Balderas Ibarra and U.S. Rep. Syvia Garcia, D-Houston, said that Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s version of events is not consistent with what three eyewitnesses told the immigration lawyer.

According to a statement on Tuesday from an ICE spokesperson, federal agents attempted to stop Salgado Araujo’s van as part of a “targeted enforcement” operation. The statement said Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, wrote in a handwritten statement to Balderas Ibarra that he shared with the Washington Post. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

The fatal shooting has renewed intense public scrutiny of ICE operations on American streets. Under the Trump administration, the agency has been given a goal of arresting 2,000 people per day as part of the president’s mass deportation goals. President Trump has prioritized cracking down on immigration in the interior of the country as fewer people in recent years have attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, at least two people — one of them a U.S. citizen — have been killed by ICE agents in Texas. And according to a Texas Tribune analysis of federal detainee death notifications and media reports, at least 14 other people have died in federal detention centers in Texas since January 2025.

Nationally, at least 10 people, including Salgado Araujo, have been killed by immigration agents since Trump’s return to office in January 2025, according to an analysis by The Guardian.

The Best of the Tribune in your Inbox

Keep tabs on Texas politics and policy with our morning newsletter.

In some of those cases, video footage from bystanders and other evidence have refuted Trump administration officials’ initial narratives of what led up to the shootings.

That’s why a separate law enforcement agency needs to investigate the shooting to determine if it was justified, Garcia, Balderas Ibarra and Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said during the Friday news conference in Houston.

“My investigators and my civil rights division have been out there from basically the moment the scene was released, up until today, looking for surveillance footage, talking to witnesses, doing everything that we can, and we do, in every case to ensure that a full, fair investigation is conducted, so that we can be transparent with our community,” Teare said.

Teare asked the public that if they have any footage “regardless of whether or not you think that it’s even relevant,” to send it to his office.

@media ( min-width: 300px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-3{min-height: 100px;}}@media ( min-width: 970px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-3{min-height: 100px;}}

He said that his office will investigate the shooting but that because it involved a federal agency, they could face obstacles if federal investigators decline to share evidence with his office. He added that “regardless of whether they do or not,” his office will do what it can to find out what happened.

Garcia said on Friday that acting ICE Director David Venturella informed her in a call the day before that ICE agents didn’t have any body-worn cameras or dashboard cameras during the shooting. Garcia also said that Venturella told her that neither Salgado Araujo nor his brother Victor Salgado, a passenger in the van, were the targets for ICE’s operation.

Venturella told her agents sought one of the other men in the van, Garcia said on Friday. But The New York Times reported that none of the men ICE was looking for that day were in the van.

On Thursday afternoon, DHS said in a statement that a tip led ICE agents to pursue Salgado Araujo’s van.

“After receiving a credible tip from our law enforcement partners, our officers conducted surveillance on a target’s address,” the DHS statement said. “Weeks prior to the incident, they noted two white vans at the 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. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.”

@media ( min-width: 300px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-4{min-height: 100px;}}@media ( min-width: 970px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-4{min-height: 100px;}}

Garcia said the detail about a separate law enforcement agency tipping off ICE agents was news to her. She added that the acting ICE director did not mention this to her and that details like this are what makes her doubt the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, is telling the full story.

“I’m not prepared to say today that it’s all lies, but it sure is looking that way,” Garcia said.

Balderas Ibarra declined to go into the full details of what the men told him from detention, saying that because of a potential investigation he would refer to what he told the Washington Post on Thursday.

The men told Balderas Ibarra that they were on their way to a construction job site after buying ice and water about 6:30 a.m. When they pulled up to a stoplight they noticed an unmarked vehicle following them, the Post reported.

As Salgado Araujo began to accelerate at a green light, the other vehicle got onto the shoulder, accelerated and cut in front of the van, the men said, according to Balderas Ibarra’s account.

@media ( min-width: 300px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-5{min-height: 100px;}}@media ( min-width: 970px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-5{min-height: 100px;}}

Salgado Araujo then made a U-turn and that’s when agents turned on the police lights on their unmarked vehicle, the Post reported. At that point Salgado Araujo, according to the newspaper, was not driving more than 5 miles per hour when agents rammed their vehicles into his work van.

“Lorenzo thought we had lost them but suddenly they surrounded us,” Rojas wrote by hand on a legal pad viewed by the Post.

That’s when an ICE agent got out of the unmarked vehicle and yelled “Stop.” He then fired his weapon from the van’s passenger side, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to the newspaper.

Salgado Araujo stopped and put the van in park when officers fired repeatedly into the van, the Post reported.

“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” wrote Victor Salgado, the driver’s brother, according to Balderas Ibarra readout of his notes to the Post.

@media ( min-width: 300px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-6{min-height: 100px;}}@media ( min-width: 970px ){.newspack_global_ad.scaip-6{min-height: 100px;}}

Rojas described the ICE agents violently pulling Salgado Araujo out of the van and throwing him to the ground, the Post reported. They put handcuffs on the other men’s wrists and feet and put them on the ground as Salgado Araujo yelled for help as he bled out.

“It just happened so fast,” Salgado told the attorney, according to the newspaper.

“They’re good people who didn’t deserve this,” Balderas Ibarra told the Post. “They were cooperating and not resisting.”

On Thursday, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that they will file complaints with state prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Justice and file “civil actions against the companies that operate detention centers” over conditions that the ministry claims led to the deaths of 14 Mexican nationals in those detention centers.

Until now, the Mexican government has sent diplomatic notes of protest to the U.S. government following the deaths of Mexican citizens in U.S. custody or during encounters with ICE.

“Our goal is to go beyond diplomatic notes and the measures we have raised before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday. “They respond to us, but then there is yet another tragic death of one of our fellow nationals in the United States related to detention, when their only offense is not having legal immigration documents, even though they were hired by a U.S. company. We cannot allow this mistreatment.”

Alejandro Santos Cid contributed to this story.

Pod Save America co-hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer bring their hit show to The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 24–26 in downtown Austin. Get tickets today!

TribFest 2026 is presented by JPMorganChase.

You've read article this month. You have unlimited free articles remaining because we don't have a paywall.

Texans need the truth. Help us report it.

Independent Texas reporting needs your support. The Texas Tribune delivers fact-based journalism for Texans, by Texans — and our community of members, the readers who donate, make our work possible. Help us bring you and millions of others in-depth news and information. Will you support our nonprofit newsroom with a donation of any amount?

You've read articles this month. You have unlimited free articles remaining because we don't have a paywall.

Texans need the truth. Help us report it.

Independent Texas reporting needs your support. The Texas Tribune delivers fact-based journalism for Texans, by Texans — and our community of members, the readers who donate, make our work possible. Help us bring you and millions of others in-depth news and information. Will you support our nonprofit newsroom with a donation of any amount?