“In Texas and across America, we don’t want to see people shot. Period,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told a crowd at a Houston campaign event on Wednesday.
It was the first time the governor acknowledged that Houston home builder Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by an ICE agent since the incident occurred on July 7. Abbott confirmed that the Texas Rangers, a law enforcement division that operates under the state Department of Public Safety, is investigating Araujo’s death.
ICE agents have said they were conducting a targeted immigration sting last week but Araujo was not the intended target. Officers claim the shooting was in self-defense and that Araujo ignored verbal warnings, rammed their vehicle with his van and tried to run over an agent. Three witnesses who were members of Araujo’s work crew and in his van at the time of the incident are now in an ICE detention facility in Conroe and have disputed the account.
Araujo, 52, was in the process of getting his citizenship and was married with three college-educated sons.
According to federal authorities, the ICE agents were not wearing body cameras and their vehicles were not equipped with dash cams. The FBI announced immediately after the incident that it would be conducting an investigation and did not invite Houston or Harris County law enforcement to the scene on Canal Street where the shooting occurred, which District Attorney Sean Teare has said is an unprecedented lack of cooperation.
After some early confusion about who has the authority to initiate an independent investigation and whether multiple agencies could or should conduct a probe simultaneously, Teare said last week his office was looking into the matter and would go to “the ends of the earth” to find out what happened. Teare acknowledged Monday that wouldn’t be an easy task since the federal government up to that point had refused to share evidence with his office.
However, the FBI posted on X on Tuesday that it briefed the DA’s office, the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office-Southern District and the Houston Police Department on its investigation into the “July 7 incident” in an effort to remain transparent and maintain the public’s trust. No details of the briefing have been released.
According to its website, the Texas Rangers conduct major violent crime, public corruption, cold case and officer-involved shooting investigations and oversee the department’s border security and tactical and crisis negotiation programs. A July 15 letter from DPS Colonel Freeman Martin to Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz says the FBI and Department of Homeland Security “have agreed to work with the Texas Department of Public Safety in assisting with the ongoing investigation.”
Teare said at a July 13 press conference that federal authorities had not provided the identity of the ICE agent who fired the fatal shot or the names of the other officers who were on the scene with Araujo It’s unclear whether the DA has that information now or how Teare’s investigation will coincide with that of the Texas Rangers.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire confirmed that HPD is supportive of the independent investigations and has shared the 911 call audio and a video from Houston METRO with Teare’s office. In a CNN interview Wednesday morning, the mayor called for a moratorium on ICE enforcement actions to provide time for additional training for ICE agents.
“It’s obvious to any objective person that their methods are not working,” Whitmire said. “Major cities have trained their officers to de-escalate. Apparently the ICE officers get no such training. If you don’t remember anything else I say this morning, they should do a moratorium so they can fit everyone with a body camera.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed earlier this week that “non-urgent” immigration traffic stops would be halted so ICE agents could receive more training. The announcement came after a second shooting occurred in Maine, in which an agent also fired into a vehicle and killed an immigrant man. Within 24 hours of Mullin’s announcement, President Donald Trump said he wanted to resume all ICE traffic stops.
Abbott, a Republican who has generally supported Trump’s aggressive ICE tactics, said Wednesday that he fully expected that immigration laws would continue to be enforced while investigations are ongoing and that “stopping illegal immigration from coming across our border can be achieved without shooting people.”
After American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by federal agents on two separate occasions in Minnesota earlier this year, Abbott said the White House should recalibrate ICE’s mission so the federal agency can rebuild trust and “get back to what they wanted to do to begin with, and that is to remove people from the country who are here illegally.”
CNN and other media outlets reported Wednesday that the FBI submitted a warrant affidavit to a federal judge on July 14 claiming that an agent described arriving on scene after Araujo’s shooting and allegedly observed small plastic bags “with a white crystal-like substance” inside Araujo’s van.
The reports were immediately met with skepticism that the evidence was planted to justify the shooting. It struck some people as unusual that Araujo, who had no criminal background, would have baggies of illegal drugs on the dashboard of his vehicle while driving to work at 6:50 a.m. Some questioned why it took federal authorities a week to release that information.
A public viewing honoring Araujo is set for 5 to 9 p.m. today, Thursday, July 16, at the Great Chapel at Forest Park Lawndale, 6900 Lawndale, Houston. A rally and “ICE Out of Houston” march is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, July 19, at Ervan Chew Park, 4502 Dunlavy, Houston. Organizers say they will be calling for the release of the three witnesses who remain in ICE custody and an end to HPD’s collaboration with ICE.
