Thousands have mobilized in the Houston area and online this week to protest the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old man who was fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday morning, July 7. It was later revealed that ICE had mistaken the victim — an undocumented Mexican immigrant and father of three who had resided in the United States for 35 years without a criminal record — for another “target.”
With the number of ICE-induced fatalities soaring to the double digits this year, the tragic killing of Salgado Araujo has devastated activists, artists, and civilians who see his qualities and vulnerabilities represented in their own circle of loved ones and community members.
ICE’s violent crackdown on undocumented residents in largely immigrant communities has sown terror, paranoia, and heartbreak across the US. Earlier this year, Mexican-American artist Criselda Vasquez, who reported that her own father had been arrested and detained by ICE during a traffic stop on his way home from work in March, described the experience as her “family’s worst fear.”
Susana Canales Barron’s tribute to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo centering his son Ronaldo’s statements (screenshots via Instagram)
The Harris County Medical Examiner has ruled Salgado Araujo’s cause of death homicide by a bullet wound in the torso. Surveillance videos and bystander footage indicate that two unmarked SUVs surrounded the victim’s white van to initiate a traffic stop, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that the officers involved in the fatal shooting “had not been issued body-worn cameras.” The DHS also stated that Salgado Araujo “attempted to evade arrest,” and alleged that he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” who fired his weapon in “self-defense.”
Salgado Araujo, who worked in construction, had picked up three men, including his brother Victor, in his van to bring to the worksite that morning. Victor and the other two men were detained at the site of the shooting and remain in ICE custody. As they face deportation proceedings, the three men disputed ICE’s claims that Salgado Araujo rammed his vehicle into the SUVs in statements to their attorney.
The victim’s eldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, said in an separate interview with the Texas Tribune that his father was very cautious about protecting his tools because they had been stolen in the past and were “how he made his livelihood.”
“Had my father seen an emblem of ICE, or an emblem that says anything about law enforcement agency, my father would have complied,” he told the local news outlet.
Mexican-American multimedia journalist and artist Susana Canales Barron illustrated a tribute to Salgado Araujo centering his life’s work and his eldest son Ronaldo’s statement in a press conference this week. Ronaldo described his father as a “family man” who spent decades working hard to give his wife and children the American Dream, and added that his father was close to obtaining his legal status in the country.
“We see our fathers in Lorenzo,” wrote California-based Chicana artist and illustrator Adriana Arriaga — who goes by Adriana la artista on social media — in an Instagram caption for a memorial portrait she created in tribute to Salgado Araujo.
The post continued: “Please, don’t stop fighting against the injustice our immigrant community is experiencing. The news has showed us that it’s life and death at this point. Our hearts ache but we need to keep fighting.”
Salgado Araujo’s family has shared a photo of him beaming with a birthday cake on his 52nd birthday, which has since become the reference for several other tribute portraits.
Political cartoonist and activist Gianluca Constantini made his vibrant tribute illustration of Salgado Araujo available to download on his website for free, encouraging anyone and everyone to share his face and story wherever they can online and in person.
“For his family, Lorenzo was not an immigration case file or a statistic,” Constantini wrote in an accompanying caption. “He was a father, a worker, and a person who had spent most of his life building a future in the United States. They are now demanding answers and ensuring that his death will not be forgotten.”
As Salgado Araujo’s family has called for an independent investigation, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced her intent to file criminal complaints against the US regarding the deaths of Mexican citizens at the hands of the DHS.
The agency’s allegations of the victim weaponizing his van and the officer acting in self-defense echo those lobbed at late Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a US citizen who was shot and killed in her car by an ICE agent in January amid the Trump-ordered immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities area. Similarly, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis less than three weeks after the killing of Macklin Good, had “attacked” law enforcement during a confrontation on the street.
