By Arathy Somasekhar, Brad Brooks and Nathan Crooks
HOUSTON, July 8 (Reuters) - There were growing calls on Wednesday for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of a man in Houston by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the latest in a string of deadly encounters involving American immigration officers.
In a statement after the shooting on Tuesday morning, ICE said the dead man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, rammed his car into an ICE vehicle and attempted to run over an officer,
who then fired on him in "self-defense." Salgado was a Mexican national living illegally in the United States and was caught up in a "targeted enforcement operation," the agency said.
Reuters could not verify the man's immigration status or the circumstances of the shooting.
At a Wednesday press conference, Salgado's son, Ronaldo, described his father as a peaceful man who had spent the past 35 years in the country as a construction worker.
"He dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream," Ronaldo said, adding that he had been working to get his legal immigration status and was close to achieving it.
Flanked by several members of Congress, leaders of Latino advocacy groups and Houston officials, Salgado called for "a full investigation" into his father's killing.
Ronaldo only learned about what had happened after seeing a video posted on social media, he said, showing his father on the ground next to his white van.
"I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out," Salgado said, choking back tears.
"It is un-American to use a fatal force against a human being, then lock away the evidence," Roman Polares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the press conference. "For too long, we have watched an open season declared on Latinos, and communities of color, under the guise of public safety."
ICE said on Tuesday that its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would lead an investigation into the shooting, while the FBI would spearhead an inquiry into the "potential assault on a law enforcement officer."
But many in this city were unwilling to wait for a federal probe: "I am calling for an immediate and impartial investigation, with all available video and findings released as soon as possible," Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council member, wrote in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday.
U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Texas Democrat who represents the neighborhood where the shooting took place, made a similar appeal for an independent investigation, saying the shooting was just the latest example of why Democrats in Congress were demanding that ICE be reformed.
"We need independent investigations, we need body cameras, clear identification, no masks and an end to paramilitary-style immigration enforcement in our streets," Garcia said at the press conference.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, speaking at a City Council meeting on Wednesday, said he was in “constant touch” with federal officials. He called for a “transparent, independent” investigation, but not a city-led inquiry, saying there “could not be two ongoing investigations.”
The fatal shooting comes months after Whitmire faced off with Texas Governor Greg Abbott over whether the city's police officers could cooperate with ICE. Since then, analysts said, he has tried to avoid confrontation over immigration enforcement.
"If the mayor can ignore this then he'll try to, with the effort to try to focus on things that he can more directly control," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.
LATEST IN SERIES OF ICE SHOOTINGS
According to the ICE account of the incident, Salgado "rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer."
The confrontation resulted in "our officer firing his weapon in self-defense," striking the driver, who was transported to a hospital where he died of his injuries, ICE said.
The deadly confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up around 2,000 migrants a day last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
At least six people have been shot and killed by federal immigration officers since January 2025, when President Donald Trump began his second term and ordered large-scale deportation sweeps.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no video had emerged of the shooting itself and it was unclear if the agents involved were wearing body cameras. Trump’s administration has slow-walked efforts to expand the use of body cameras by immigration officers and sharply cut oversight staffing last year as it surged officers into cities across the nation, undermining the ability of ICE and DHS to investigate abuses.
In several instances over the past year, initial statements from federal agencies about their use of force have been challenged by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.
Marimar Martinez, a Chicago-area woman, was accused in October of ramming law enforcement officers with her car. She was shot five times but survived. Charges against her were ultimately dropped and video evidence suggested that the agents might have caused the collision.
Trump administration officials also said that two U.S. citizens shot dead by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, had threatened bodily harm to the agents before they were killed -- despite apparently contradictory video evidence.
In May, a Minnesota prosecutor charged an ICE agent in connection with a non-fatal shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis during the same immigration crackdown in which Good and Pretti were killed.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Nathan Crooks in Houston, and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Alistair Bell)
