A week has passed since Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot to death by an immigration agent while he was headed to work, and local authorities still don’t know the name of the shooter, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told reporters on Monday.
What’s undisputed is that Araujo died at Ben Taub Hospital after being shot in the abdomen just before 7 a.m. July 7 on Canal Street in the Magnolia Park neighborhood.
Teare says he learned about the incident from the Houston Police Department while the scene was still active, and his office was not invited to participate in evidence gathering.
Araujo’s family members found out through news stories posted to social media. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in a statement that Araujo ignored verbal warnings, rammed an unmarked government vehicle with his van and tried to run over an ICE agent.
Three men who were in the vehicle with Araujo, one of whom was his brother, have said through an attorney that’s not what happened, that no vehicle was rammed and the agents were to the side of Araujo’s van, not in front of it, disputing the officer’s self-defense claim. Araujo’s son Ronaldo Salgado has said that his dad likely thought the men who were chasing him were going to rob him and take his tools.
The witnesses are now in an ICE detention facility in Conroe and attorney Hugo Baldera-Ybarra says he fears they are being pressured to self-deport to Mexico.
Araujo was in the process of obtaining his citizenship and had no criminal record, his sons have said. The family of the slain man — who had been in the United States for 35 years — called for an independent investigation, as did numerous elected officials and community members.
Teare confirmed last week that his office is leading an independent probe, a standard procedure when a person loses their life and a law enforcement officer is involved. In 20 years of working in the DA’s office, however, he said he’s never been so stonewalled by a federal agency.
“The federal government has not invited us in,” he said. “The federal government is not collaborating with us on this investigation. In all likelihood, this will take many, many months, potentially years, before we finally get the answers we all need. We will not rest. If someone needs to be held accountable, they will be.”
The amount of time required to complete the investigation will shrink if federal officials cooperate, Teare added, noting that he’s considering all possibilities, including asking a judge to order that evidence be released.
While the civil rights group LULAC originally called for the Houston Police Department to investigate, Mayor John Whitmire said it wasn’t the city’s jurisdiction and there could not be multiple competing investigations. Whitmire called a press conference on July 10 and said HPD, which was not on the scene at the time the shooting occurred but arrived shortly thereafter to direct traffic, will share all appropriate resources available to support investigations.
“Everyone is hurting today and wants more information,” Whitmire said. “The city is behind the family and will share any and all information we get.” Whitmire also claimed at his press conference that ICE is “out of control.”
“You don’t do what ICE did on Tuesday morning: unmarked vehicle, a chase,” he said. “And I will repeat again, HPD was following policy. We do not interact.” Whitmire was admonished by the Harris County Democratic Party in December 2025 for, among other things, his handling of HPD’s interactions with ICE.
Araujo’s death occurred less than three months after the Houston City Council adopted an ordinance limiting HPD’s interaction with ICE. The council later weakened the policy to appease Gov. Greg Abbott, who’d threatened to withdraw about $114 million in public safety grants from the city. Republican leaders, including Abbott and President Donald Trump, have not spoken publicly about last week’s shooting.
On Monday, members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus called for another independent investigation to be conducted by the Texas Rangers.
The U.S. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is investigating Araujo’s death and have indicated that they’re not interested in any help from the locals. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said last week she was told there is no timeline for the completion of the federal investigation and it’s unclear whether it’s even started.
Officials in Maine confirmed Monday morning that a “person was killed. ICE was involved,” prompting more national attention on what critics say is a reckless, aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.
Dozens of Houstonians are expected to attend a public comment session at City Hall at 2 p.m. Tuesday to express their concerns about ICE’s local presence and call for action to ensure another shooting doesn’t occur again. ICE officials have said the July 7 operation was a targeted sting but that Araujo wasn’t the target. Some have interpreted that to mean that anyone can be shot by ICE at any time on a public street and the government doesn’t have to take any accountability for it.
“ICE Out of Houston” banners have been displayed at No Kings protests and since Araujo’s death last week, but local authorities have said they can’t make the federal agents go away.
“I have the utmost hope that the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Inspector General, who are conducting this investigation, will share evidence with us,” Teare said. “Regardless of whether they do or not, we will go to the ends of the earth to collect all the evidence so that we can eventually let the public know what happened.”
In the days after the shooting, DHS confirmed that none of the officers on the scene were wearing body cameras and no dash cams were in the government vehicles that responded. Garcia and U.S. Rep. Al Green pointed out that the Republican-controlled Congress funneled $20 million toward ICE in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer and was told in February that cameras would be distributed to ICE field offices across the country.
“If there is no body camera footage, we want an explanation of why such footage was not recorded,” Green said last week. “We want to know why. You’ve got $20 million. You said you were going to do it. This is negligence if you haven’t done it, or it’s malfeasance. We’ll find out. You don’t just arbitrarily and capriciously decide you’re going to stop people in white vans because of the way they look. This is out of hand. ICE has to be stopped.”
Congress members are also asking for protocols on how ICE officers identify themselves when conducting traffic stops and whether any of the agents involved in the July 7 incident have had previous complaints lodged against them for excessive use of force. Garcia said she was told by Acting ICE Director David Venturella that federal authorities have no intention of providing a prompt response to the Congress members’ questions.
“He made no commitment to an independent investigation,” Garcia said. “He made no commitment to answering any questions that members of Congress with oversight responsibilities should be getting.”
Teare admitted Monday at a press conference with Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis that his office has an uphill battle in getting to the facts. Ellis called the gathering to announce that he’ll be asking commissioners court this week to fully fund Teare’s investigation. Ellis and Teare said they didn’t know what that dollar figure would be, but Teare said he would likely need to hire additional investigators.
The DA noted that he spoke to the special agent in charge of the Houston ICE office and “she let me know they are not running this investigation. We had a fine conversation but it wasn’t substantive in any way. We’ve attempted to communicate with any number of federal agencies and have had varying levels of success.”
“We have yet to speak to the investigative branch that is actually looking into the shooting,” he said.
Teare said he’s received more than 100 communications through a hotline set up for members of the public to share eyewitness accounts and video footage from the day of the shooting. He declined to comment on whether he’s seen Araujo’s van or interviewed the men in the detention center. Video footage and other evidence obtained by the DA’s office will “eventually” be shared with the public, Teare said.
“Until we make a charging decision, we are going to hold all the evidence so we can evaluate it and eventually present it to a grand jury,” he said. “At the culmination of this investigation, regardless of whether it results in charges or in a no-bill, we will let the public see how we got to that determination.”
Because ICE agents also shot two documented American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis earlier this year — also asserting that Good tried to run over an officer although video evidence did not corroborate the claim — the American people have lost trust in the federal government, Teare said.
“We’re going down every avenue we can simply to identify the agents involved in the shooting,” he said. “We’re almost a week in, and no one on the state level knows who they are or where they are right now. That’s unacceptable, and it’s something that doesn’t happen. In every state or local officer-involved shooting, the DA’s office knows that officer’s identity within 12 hours. In this case it’s been six days and we still don’t know.”
The DA added that the lack of cooperation is forcing his office to be reactionary. “We’ve got to go backwards,” he said. “We’ve got to find locations where these agents were before.” He added that the current federal immigration enforcement strategy has made his job more difficult because communities are scared.
“Whatever the stated reason for ICE’s tactics over the last two years to reduce crime or whatever it is, it is having a 180-degree opposite effect in Harris County,” he said. “It is making it more difficult for my office to prosecute violent offenders and hold them accountable, whether or not their targets and their victims were documented. We have sexual assaults of children that I can’t prosecute because the outcry witness is too scared to participate. We have aggravated robbery victims who will not come forward because of their status, allowing people out there to prey on victims without any repercussions.”
“We are not able to hold violent criminals accountable because of the tactics of ICE,” he added. “Full stop. And if you look across the board, the undocumented population in this country commits crimes at a lower rate than any other population. They’re scared to get speeding tickets.”
Ellis said how Harris County responds to the shooting is important, as the nation is watching. “Harris County should be able to say we did everything in our power to preserve the evidence and uncover the facts,” he said.
Garcia said at a July 9 candlelight vigil for Araujo that it’s important to ensure that America is free and that democracy thrives, “and that we do not have someone who is dictating and allowing anybody — anybody — with a shield of law enforcement to do whatever they want, however they want. We must make sure that we get accountability, that we have a real, thorough up-and-down investigation. We must have justice.”
