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The fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by federal immigration officers in Texas this week has reignited a firestorm over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and sparked calls for an independent investigation into what officials admit was a case of mistaken identity.
Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, was driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston just before 7 a.m. local time on Tuesday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers attempted to stop his vehicle.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Hill that the traffic stop was “part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest and illegal alien” and accused Salgado Araujo of attempting to evade authorities.
He allegedly ignored verbal commands, rammed the officers’ SUV and “weaponized his vehicle” in an attempt to run over an ICE officer, who fired his weapon “in self defense,” according to the spokesperson. Salgado Araujo was shot in the stomach and later died at the hospital.
Individuals who were with him in the vehicle have disputed that account.
Here’s what we know:
He wasn’t the intended target
Salgado Araujo lived in the Houston area for 35 years, owned a construction business, had been working to obtain a work permit and was close to obtaining legal status, according to his family.
His son, Ronaldo Salgado, described his father as a “man of routine” and should have been picking up the last of his crew members when the encounter occurred.
“My father did not deserve this,” he wrote on Facebook.
His relatives maintain that he had no criminal record and knew what to do if approached by ICE officers. They said he may have mistaken the unmarked SUV for robbers who were going to steal his tools, according to The Associated Press.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) said acting ICE Director David Venturella later confirmed that the man was not the intended target of the agency’s enforcement operation.
Officers believed Salgado Araujo “resembled” the person they were searching for, according to DHS, which told The Hill that two white vans — like the one Salgado Araujo was driving — had been spotted on the property of their intended target weeks earlier.
“He was not a target,” Garcia said during a Friday press conference. “So we have to ask ourselves: Then why did he end up being killed by ICE?”
Passengers dispute DHS account
Passengers who were inside the vehicle have disputed DHS’s account, with an attorney for the family describing it as “completely false” after speaking with the three men.
“At no point did they ever use the van to ram into the ICE agents, and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,” Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said in a video posted to Instagram on Friday, demanding an independent investigation.
“The ICE agents’ accounts of what happened do not reflect and are very inconsistent with the stories — with the recollection that I got from the three people that were in the vehicle with Lorenzo,” he added.
The three men, one of whom was Salgado Araujo’s brother, are currently being held in federal custody.
The men told The Washington Post that the unmarked ICE cars rammed the slow-moving van before approaching from the sides.
“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,” Jose Trinidad Rojas wrote in a statement obtained by the newspaper, calling the government’s narrative a “lie.”
The administration’s position that Salgado Araujo attempted to weaponize his vehicle echoes the account given in the aftermath of 37-year-old Renee Good’s death. Good, a U.S. citizen, was fatally shot in her car during a January altercation with federal immigration officers in Minnesota.
But unlike that incident — and the fatal shooting of another U.S. citizen Alex Pretti — there is little footage of the Houston encounter.
Video shared with CNN showed the immediate aftermath, with several individuals seen being held down on the ground by federal officers.
There is no body-worn camera or dashboard camera footage, according to Garcia.
“Even after we’ve given ICE specifically $20 million for body cameras and Kristi Noem promised in February of this year that she was going to purchase them and get them in the field…here we were in Houston…the agents didn’t have them,” the Texas Democrat said.
She added that Ventura promised to equip all field officers with body cameras by the end of the month.
Salgado said his father was on his way to a project when the encounter with ICE took place. Three other men, including Salgado Araujo’s brother, were taken into federal custody.
Several investigations underway as accountability calls grow
The FBI, DHS Office of Inspector General and local prosecutors have all opened inquiries into the shooting, though the investigations range in scope.
The DHS Inspector General is conducting an internal investigation, while the FBI is investigating allegations of an assault on a federal officer, according to The Hill’s sister network News Nation.
Meanwhile, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office is also in the process of its own investigation, which officials say is routine in any officer-involved shooting.
But District Attorney Sean Teare said on Friday that a lack of cooperation from federal authorities has hindered his office’s probe.
“We were not invited into this scene on Tuesday,” he said during a press conference.
“I have the utmost hope that the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Inspector General who are conducting this investigation will share evidence with us,” he added. “Regardless of whether they do or not, we will got to the ends of the Earth to collect all the evidence so that we can eventually let the public know what happened.”
Prosecutors have asked the community to come forward with any information or video footage they may have.
It comes as Salgado Araujo’s family, immigration advocates and local and international officials continue to press for justice and accountability for federal officers participating in the administration’s mass deportation effort.
“We recognize that it is a federal police agency that was out of control Tuesday morning,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said on Friday, referring to a conversation with Garcia. He said the city “will not rest” until a thorough, independent investigation has been completed.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum announced on Thursday that the country intends to file criminal complaints regarding Mexican citizens who have died in federal U.S. custody or while being targeted in an enforcement operation.
“We are going to do everything in our power, because we cannot stand silent” in the face of the deaths of Mexicans “whose only crime is working honestly in the United States,” Sheinbaum said, according to AP.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Acting ICE Director David Venturella Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum Rep. Sylvia GarciaCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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