DHS’s Account of Salgado Araujo Killing Is “A Lie,” Witness Says

All of the witnesses to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo have reportedly said that the slain 52-year-old father never tried to ram immigration agents’ car as officials have claimed.

Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, an attorney for the three men who were in the car with Salgado Araujo, has said that they have all separately disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) account of the killing, per reporting by The Washington Post, which reviewed the witnesses’ written and oral accounts.

Shortly after the killing on Tuesday, DHS claimed that the ICE agent who killed Salgado Araujo acted in “self-defense.” Salgado Araujo, the department claimed, “attempted to evade arrest” and “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”

Witnesses in the car with the Mexican immigrant say that this account is patently false, and that at no point during the encounter was there ever an ICE agent standing in front of the vehicle.

“That is a lie,” wrote Jose Trinidad Rojas, one of the witnesses, in a testimony, per the Post. “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.”

All three of the men in the vehicle with Salgado Araujo, who were on their way to work around 6:30 am, are now in immigration detention and are facing deportation proceedings. They are not being housed together, but still gave the same account of the incident in separate testimonies, Balderas-Ibarra said.

The men said it was just a regular commute to work when an unmarked vehicle began following the car being driven by Salgado Araujo. The vehicle abruptly cut them off in the middle of an intersection, and Salgado Araujo made a U-turn and proceeded slowly down the street. Rather than ramming ICE vehicles, the ICE vehicles rammed their car, the witnesses said, and Salgado Araujo eventually came to a stop when an ICE agent shot him in the abdomen.

“All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” said Balderas-Ibarra. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.” The attorney said that he believes the agents “are lying” about the shooting.

Indeed, Victor Salgado, the shooting victim’s younger brother, said that the ICE officer who shot Salgado Araujo shot him from the passenger side window. The agents were shooting from the sides of the vehicle even after Salgado Araujo put the vehicle in park, the witnesses said.

“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” Salgado said.

The agents violently pulled Salgado Araujo out of the car and threw him on the ground, where he lay bleeding and yelling for help, his brother said.

The agent reportedly said to Salgado, mockingly: “Se querían escapar, verdad?” meaning, “you wanted to escape, right?”

Meanwhile, immigration officials are reportedly trying to pressure the witnesses to self-deport, a representative for the families told The New Republic. DHS has a known history of lying and distorting information with regard to its agents’ violence, with the department spreading a similar, bunk claim about Renee Nicole Good after she was shot and killed by an immigration agent in January.

“They’re being pressured to sign self-deportation orders,” said the representative, Juan Proaño. “They’re currently in detention. These men hold the key to what actually happened.”

DHS’s account also suggests that ICE agents sought to stop Salgado Araujo in order to arrest him — but reports say that he wasn’t the target of their operations, and that ICE agents were seeking to apprehend another pair of immigrants that morning.

The immigration agents were out searching for two people from Guatemala who they believed to also be driving the white van that Salgado Araujo was driving, according to The New York Times, who spoke to two people with knowledge of the matter. But the two people weren’t in the car, the sources said, and agents opened fire nonetheless.