DHS Says Man Killed By ICE In Houston Was Case Of Mistaken Identity

The Department of Homeland Security(DHS) has acknowledged that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man fatally shot by immigration agents during a Houston traffic stop on Tuesday, was not actually the person agents were looking for. Salgado, a Mexican national, was stopped at 7am while driving to work and was killed shortly after.

DHS said the stop was triggered because agents spotted “a white van with an individual who resembled the target” of an enforcement operation, and maintains the officer involved fired in self-defense. None of the agents present were wearing body cameras, and officials have released no footage or images from the incident. A DHS spokesperson told CBS News that half of its field officers now have body cameras, with the rest expected to be equipped within 60 days.

Salgado’s family said the 52-year-old had worked as a builder in the Houston area for three decades after arriving in the US as an undocumented migrant, had no criminal record, and was close to securing a work permit. He was driving himself and three co-workers to a job site at the time of the shooting.

DHS’s initial statement on Tuesday claimed Salgado had tried to evade arrest and rammed an ICE vehicle before the agent opened fire in self-defense; he later died in hospital. On Thursday, the department added that agents had observed two white vans at a surveilled address weeks earlier, and believed they had found a matching vehicle when they returned on Tuesday.

The shooting sparked protests in Houston on Wednesday, and four Democratic members of Congress — Sylvia Garcia, Al Green, Lizzie Fletcher and Christian Menefee — have called for an independent investigation. In a letter to DHS, they argued this was far from an isolated case of ICE using excessive force, and pointed to the earlier deaths of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis in January. They criticized DHS and ICE for repeating a familiar narrative of evasion, vehicle “weaponization” and self-defense rather than offering genuine accountability.

Separately, Mexico’s government announced plans to file criminal complaints in the US over the deaths of more than a dozen Mexican nationals in ICE custody. Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco said 14 Mexicans have died in ICE custody and three more during ICE arrest operations, and that President Claudia Sheinbaum has directed him to pursue the complaints so these deaths are investigated as criminal matters.