Hundreds of workers, young people and immigrant families rallied Sunday at Ervan Chew Park in Houston to demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old construction worker and father of three killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on July 7. Salgado’s sons addressed the crowd, which later marched onto the Hazard Street bridge.
On Monday, an attorney for Salgado’s brother, Victor, filed a habeas corpus petition seeking his release from ICE custody. Victor was inside the work van when his brother was shot. He and two other witnesses, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and José Trinidad Rojas, remain imprisoned at the Montgomery ICE Processing Center in Conroe and could be deported, the evident purpose being to prevent them from contradicting the government’s account of Salgado’s murder. The agent who killed Salgado has not been publicly identified, arrested or charged.
The witnesses say the agents did not identify themselves and none was standing in front of the van when the officer fired. DHS initially claimed Salgado used the van as a weapon and struck a government vehicle. That claim was absent from a statement Thursday by US Attorney Aaron Reitz. Reitz said the officer was beside or partly inside the van, no agent was injured and Salgado was not the target of the operation.