Friday will mark one month since Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood, and no one can promise it won’t happen again.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who is conducting an independent investigation into Araujo’s death, was asked at a meeting of the Oak Forest Area Democrats on Monday if he could provide any assurances that the streets are safe from ICE.
“The answer is no,” Teare said to a packed house at Spaghetti Western on TC Jester. “I can’t say that you’re safe from ICE right now.”
While the attendees at Monday’s meeting didn’t appear to love the answer, they seemed to agree with it. “We’re one [traffic] stop away from death or deportation,” a man shouted from the back of the room.
Araujo’s death marked the 10th fatal shooting by an ICE agent during President Donald Trump’s second term, which began in January 2025. One week after Araujo’s death, another immigrant was killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. Like Araujo, that shooting victim was also not the intended target of an immigration sweep.
While communities across the country are grappling with violence due to what critics say is Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, Teare said Monday that there’s not a jurisdiction in the United States that is as far along in its investigation as Harris County is.
“That’s in large part because I’m standing on the shoulders of other jurisdictions that have had to go through this,” he said. “From the very moment that it happened, in part because of what we saw in the reactions from the federal government in Illinois and Minnesota, I knew we had to deploy resources that I had to pull off of other things.”
As community members wait for answers, they continue to honor Araujo and protest ICE’s presence in Houston. On Friday, August 7, at 6 p.m., a vigil and celebration of life hosted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation-Houston will be held at the site on Canal Street where Araujo was killed.
Araujo’s son Ronaldo Salgado advised the public last week that items were recently removed from the memorial site because Houston METRO is resuming roadwork. Salgado said he and his brothers have saved some of the mementos, and some will be preserved in an archive at Houston Public Library.
“The plan is to be able to have a permanent home for how the East End and Magnolia Park community felt in July 2026, and for future generations to learn about my dad and the events of his unjust death,” Salgado wrote on Facebook. On the morning of August 3, a mural went up in front of the barbershop at 6821 Canal that reads, “Somos Lorenzo,” or “We are Lorenzo.”
On Saturday, August 8, Montgomery County nonprofit We Rise Up is hosting a public gathering at Lions Park, 1913 Northampton Road, Conroe, at 4 p.m., followed by a march to the ICE detention facility where two witnesses to Araujo’s shooting are being detained. The group will drop a banner on the bridge at North Loop 336 and Interstate 45 around 6 p.m.
Teare has said repeatedly that the federal government, which is conducting its own investigation, has not been forthcoming with sharing evidence. The officers involved in the shooting weren’t wearing body cameras and their vehicles weren’t equipped with dash cams, and the DA’s office was not immediately invited to the crime scene, which is unusual when an officer-involved fatality occurs, Teare has said.
The DA told Oak Forest Area Democrats on Monday that investigators with his civil rights team have been on the scene at Canal Street daily since the shooting occurred and they are moving swiftly to gather information.
“We were back out in the East End, talking to people and pulling surveillance today,” he said. While Teare said last month that the investigation could take months or years to complete, alluding to the lack of cooperation from federal authorities, he has since revised that statement to say that information about the probe will be made public soon.
The officer who fired the fatal shot has not been named publicly, but Teare says he’s seeking the truth and will file murder charges if that’s where the investigation leads him.
“My primary goal is to make sure this investigation is complete and thorough, and if charges are warranted, we are able to continue that prosecution,” he said Monday. “I’d be an ostrich sticking my head in the sand if I said that I’m just going to sit on this and hope it goes away. Actually doing a thorough investigation is the only way I can ensure that residents and people on the streets of Harris County are safe. The only way we can push back is for people in positions of power to stand up and say this is not right.”
Teare said his first assistant district attorney walked into his office recently and said, “Donald Trump knows your name now,” and jokingly suggested that he might need to move down the hall.
While Teare has acknowledged that it’s been challenging to conduct an investigation without the cooperation of ICE, he has full confidence in Texas Ranger Daron Parker, who is leading the probe for the state.
“I completely understand that the Rangers’ history is checkered, but they are our go-to partner in officer-involved shootings,” Teare said. “We know the way they operate. Daron Parker has an office in our office. I trust Daron implicitly. I also completely understand that my investigation is my investigation.”
“I’m the only one who doesn’t have anybody else to answer to,” he added. “Daron has to go all the way up to {Gov.] Greg Abbott. Jason at the FBI has to go all the way up to [FBI Director] Kash Patel and eventually Donald Trump. When I think something is right, we’re going to go with that.”
The July 7 shooting of Araujo has prompted fear among immigrant communities but also mobilized civil rights advocates to take action. Houston attorney Randall Kallinen announced Tuesday morning he has filed a class action lawsuit against the City of Houston for “holding non-criminal individuals for ICE.”
Houston City Council members have also recently weighed in on the shooting, as protesters pack City Hall week after week to demand that ICE be removed from Houston. Council Member Alejandra Salinas told the Houston Press last week that she’s willing to reintroduce an ordinance limiting HPD’s interaction with ICE if she has the backing of her colleagues.
“If we have the votes and the will of the council, I would bring it back in a heartbeat,” she said of the policy that was approved in April but amended a week later after Abbott threatened to withdraw $114 million in public safety funding.
“My commitment is to try to do everything in my power to make sure that we are doing only the bare minimum required under state law when it comes to our cooperation with ICE,” Salinas said. “While we cannot stop everything ICE is doing, we can certainly control how much of our tax dollars are going to facilitate their operations.”
