Anti-Immigrant Raids Less Visible, Just as Deadly: Daily Arrests Double to 2,000
By Yvonne Hayes and Duane Stilwell
On July 7, 2026, U.S. immigration agents added another name to the list of people they have shot dead.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived on the U.S. side of the border for 35 years, was on his way to work at a construction site in Houston, Texas, with three fellow workers, including his younger brother. Video shows his white panel van being followed by two unmarked cars.
Minutes later, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle” against an ICE agent and was shot by the officer acting in “self-defense.” Salgado Araujo died on the way to the hospital. His coworkers are all in detention.
Almost immediately, the Salgado family and civil rights groups called for an independent investigation, saying they did not trust the federal government to tell the truth given its track record in other cases. Testimony from Salgado Araujo’s coworkers — the only known eyewitnesses so far — which emerged in the media three days after the murder, supported the family’s suspicions. Their statements caused the ICE thugs’ story to begin to unravel.
The “weaponized vehicle” defense is not new. In multiple shooting cases — including that of U.S. citizen Renee Good, killed while acting as a legal observer of ICE actions in Minnesota — agents have cited “aggressive behavior” by the driver as justification for their actions. In multiple cases, those allegations have fallen apart under scrutiny, often with the help of video evidence.
In Texas, in March 2025, an ICE agent shot and killed 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martínez, another U.S. citizen, during a traffic stop. The involvement of ICE in his death was only revealed a year later. Officials claimed Martínez had “intentionally” run over a federal agent, but video painted a more complicated picture.
In Salgado Araujo’s case, the video evidence available publicly has gaps, including at the time of the shooting. The federal agents did not wear body cameras.
People in Salgado Araujo’s community turned out the evening after his killing, flooding the residential street where the construction worker was gunned down.
In Houston’s East End, a predominantly Latino neighborhood, residents were joined by several U.S. representatives and immigrant advocates, calling for ICE to leave the state. During a candlelight vigil, people left candles, stuffed animals, and notes at a memorial honoring Salgado Araujo on nearby Canal Street.
Official story begins to unravel
Now, days after ICE claimed Salgado Araujo attempted “to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” the official story is unraveling.
On July 10, The Washington Post reported that lawyers had been in contact with Salgado Araujo’s three coworkers who were in the van. Referring to the allegation that the construction worker tried to ram officers with his vehicle, Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, one of the three, handwrote in a statement, “That is a lie … It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra interviewed Rojas; Daniel Tirado Pantoja, 43; and the victim’s brother, Victor Salgado, 44, each separately. The lawyer said he heard the same story from all three. “All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.”
The three men are not being housed together, the attorney said. All of them are undocumented Mexican immigrants now facing deportation proceedings.
The shooting death of Salgado Araujo is the 10th in the last year and a half. Since returning to office in 2025, U.S. president Donald Trump has unleashed an army of ICE thugs to execute his promise of carrying out “the largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history. Five of those deaths were among the 21 reported incidents of ICE agents shooting into vehicles. In that same time frame, at least 52 immigrants have died in ICE custody.
The highly visible actions by thousands of masked and jack-booted thugs, brandishing weapons and pepper spray, that characterized Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota earlier this year, as well as in operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities, have been toned down in the face of mass resistance.
However, ICE detentions have increased in recent months. The New York Times reported on July 1 that immigration agents had made 10,000 arrests in the previous five days, reflecting the 2,000 daily average “standard for enforcement” the White House has demanded from ICE.
The effects of these actions are being seen across the continental United States and beyond.
“In Puerto Rico, a pastor said she had seen federal agents deploy increasingly aggressive tactics against Black and darker-skinned immigrants, including many from Haiti, who have recently seen their humanitarian protections revoked,” reported the New York Times on July 10.
“Despite claims that Operation Midway Blitz has ended, it isn’t over,” said Berto Aguayo, a Chicago attorney, referring to the immigration dragnet last summer in that city. “We are in solidarity with Texas demanding justice.” ICE operations have increasingly included the abduction of immigrants at courthouses and in government buildings as they report for scheduled check-ins or interviews and in traffic stops.
The targets of these operations are not “the worst of the worst,” as the Trump administration claims. In fact, official data show the arrests of people with criminal convictions in Houston, for example, fell from an average of roughly 61% under the Biden administration to 39% under Trump.
These numbers, however, are deceiving. In addition to minor traffic violations, many of these “crimes” are simply the act of entering the U.S. without papers. Those who are otherwise law-abiding are included in the statistics if they have been previously detained for crossing the border without documentation.
Of course, many immigrants cross multiple times as they continue to care for family on the other side of the border. For that, they are branded “felons.”
U.S. government policy is designed to aid the super-exploitation of immigrant workers. Using usurious exports of finance capital for lucrative investments designed to steal the wealth of semicolonial countries, unequal trade, and other such tools, Washington fosters unlivable conditions in these workers’ countries of origin — like Mexico, forcing them to migrate in search of a better life.
U.S. immigration policy then forces these working people to cross the border without papers, so they can be a cheap and expendable source of labor in the United States. If these working people had access to legal avenues to come to the United States seeking jobs, most would not risk life and limb to cross the border illegally.
The majority of the people caught up in these sweeps are working people like Salgado Araujo — many with spouses or children who are U.S. citizens — trying to get their green cards or citizenship. They are abducted by ICE doing the very thing the government claims immigrants should do — go through legal channels. Workers without criminal records compose the bulk of the more than 70,000 now in ICE detention across the country.
‘My father should not be just a headline’
At a news conference the day after the shooting, Ronaldo Salgado, a schoolteacher, said of his father, “He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of ‘Mexican man shot and killed by ICE’.”
“After nearly 35 years of working to give us the American dream, he made the choice to begin the process of obtaining his American dream through a work permit,” Ronaldo Salgado said. “We dotted every I, crossed every T, filled every document, attended every appointment. He was close to obtaining his legal status.”
Salgado Araujo had a biometric scan and fingerprints done earlier this year, his son said, and had carefully studied what to do if ICE pulled him over.
“Had my father seen an emblem of ICE or an emblem that says anything about a law enforcement agency, my father would have complied,” Ronaldo Salgado continued. He concluded that if he was speeding away, it was probably because he feared having his tools stolen.
The outrage over this murder and the continued killings by ICE agents is growing in the Latino community and beyond.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929, is the oldest Latino civil rights organization with more than 500 councils nationwide. LULAC launched a petition demanding a “full transparent investigation” into the shooting by ICE. It has already garnered more than 168,000 signatures.
On July 11, the Latino Indigenous Coalition of Arizona issued a press release stating: “We demand that every piece of evidence available, including surveillance video, radio communications, witness statements, and body-camera footage (if any exists) be preserved and released to the public. We demand a full, independent investigation. We demand that the names of the ICE agents involved in this unjustified and egregious use of force be made public, and that they be returned to Houston to face the legal consequences of their reckless actions in a court of law.”
On July 9, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced his office is committed to investigating the fatal shooting but cautioned that local prosecutors face challenges accessing evidence, according to The Texas Tribune.
“Unfortunately at this time,” Teare posted on his X account, “federal authorities continue exclusively handling all aspects in this case. Let me be clear: Mr. Salgado Araujo’s family and our community deserve the truth. I urge anyone with video, photos, or eyewitness accounts regarding Tuesday’s shooting in the 6800 block of Canal Street to come forward.”
Teare has also been in contact with the Hennepin County, Minnesota, attorney’s office, which launched inquiries into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents earlier this year. “No one is more familiar with these kinds of situations than them,” he said.
Mexican government to file criminal complaints
Adding its voice to the calls for justice, the Mexican government announced it plans to file criminal complaints in the United States regarding Mexican citizens who have died in immigration custody or while being targeted in anti-immigration operations. Fourteen Mexican nationals have died while in ICE custody. Three more died in arrest operations conducted by the agency.
Citing repeated failed attempts to engage with Washington through diplomatic channels, Mexico’s foreign minister Roberto Velasco said, “We are going to move beyond the diplomatic sphere and go directly to U.S. prosecutors to file complaints regarding these incidents, requesting that they be investigated as criminal matters.” He added that Mexico will also file civil lawsuits against private companies that operate immigration detention centers in the United States.
Salgado Araujo’s murder comes on the heels of an announcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of sweeping changes in the legal avenues open to immigrants to acquire green cards, which enable them to live and work in the United States. The government has said that, with few exceptions, applicants must return to their home countries to pursue work permits and residency. Often this means separating families indefinitely.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Haitians, Syrians, and other refugees — living and working legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — now face possible deportation back to countries they fled because their lives were in danger. DHS — backed by the Supreme Court — has cancelled that status in many cases or is allowing it to expire.
The Trump administration has also drastically reduced immigration quotas for refugees. The limit originally set for this year was 7,500, down from 125,000 in Biden’s final year in office. As of the end of May 2026, 6,688 refugees had been admitted, all but three white South Africans. The administration has increased the cap to 10,000, citing the need to allow more white South Africans in because of alleged persecution in their home country.
The government is also increasingly targeting those who defend immigrant rights, from citizens involved in defending their neighbors to a Wisconsin judge who gave a safe exit from her courtroom to an undocumented immigrant while federal agents waited outside.
Duane Stilwell, a member of LULAC, is reporting from Phoenix, Arizona. Yvonne Hayes is reporting from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Categories: Immigration / Refugees