ICE says the Houston man it fatally shot was not the intended target
The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national fatally shot by an ICE officer in Houston on July 7, was not the target of the operation. Acting ICE director David Venturella said Salgado Araujo, who was on his way to a construction job with three other men, “resembled the target” and was stopped after officers spotted a white van matching one seen during surveillance of an address.
ICE says Salgado Araujo ignored commands and tried to run over an officer, “weaponizing his vehicle,” prompting the officer to fire in self-defense. Passengers in the vehicle dispute that account, saying no officer was ever in front of the van and that the shots came from the sides. The officers were not wearing body cameras and no dashboard cameras captured the stop, leaving the competing accounts without independent footage to resolve them.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire has said the city will open its own investigation, adding local scrutiny to a case that turns on whether a mistaken-identity stop escalated to a killing that the agency’s own rules would not justify.