The Witnesses Say the Van Never Touched Anyone. ICE Fired Anyway.
Three men interviewed separately from detention dismantle DHS's account of the Houston killing — a shot from the side, a parked van, a mocking agent.
The three men who watched an ICE officer kill Lorenzo Salgado Araujo say the government's account is false at every load-bearing point. Interviewed separately in immigration detention by attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra — accounts the Washington Post published overnight — Jose Trinidad Rojas, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Victor Salgado, the victim's brother, each described the same scene: no officer ever stood in front of the van DHS claims was "weaponized" to run one down. "That is a lie," Rojas wrote by hand from detention.
Their account, per the Post: the four men left for a construction job around 6:30 AM Tuesday when an unmarked car cut off their van and brake-checked it. Salgado Araujo U-turned; only then did lights come on. Crawling through road construction at roughly 5 mph, the van was rammed and boxed in by ICE vehicles on both sides — and an officer ran at the passenger side, yelled "Stop!", and shot Salgado Araujo, 52, in the abdomen. The men say the firing continued after he braked and put the van in park. Agents cuffed his wrists and feet as he bled; his brother recalls one asking, in a mocking tone, "You wanted to escape, right?" Salgado Araujo reached Ben Taub Hospital as a John Doe and died there.
ICE's own admissions already corroborate the edges. The acting director told Rep. Sylvia Garcia on Thursday that the agents wore no body cameras and no dash cameras — and that the administrative warrant named neither Salgado Araujo nor his brother. The New York Times reports the actual targets were two Guatemalan men; everyone in the van was Mexican, undocumented, decades in the country, no criminal records.
