ICE seeks to deport witnesses who dispute fatal shooting

HOUSTON (MNTV) — Federal immigration authorities are seeking to deport three witnesses who dispute ICE’s account of the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — the only people who saw it from inside his van.

Salgado Araujo, 52, had lived in the United States for more than three decades and ran a small construction business.

He was traveling to work with three coworkers when ICE officers stopped him.

The agency says he tried to evade arrest by striking their vehicles, prompting an officer to fire in self-defense.

The three men in the van reject that. They say the officer opened fire immediately after stepping out of an unmarked vehicle, and that Salgado Araujo never drove toward or struck any agent.

Jose Trinidad Rojas said ICE’s description was false and that the officers were positioned beside the van, not in front of it. The other two witnesses reportedly corroborated him.

All three are undocumented and were detained after the killing.

Advocates say they are now being pressed to sign self-deportation orders — which would remove the only firsthand testimony contradicting the agency, before any independent investigation is complete.

Immigration experts and civil rights advocates have also pointed to video evidence and to the absence of visible damage to the front of the van, both hard to square with the claim that it was driven at agents as a weapon.

An agency that kills someone and then deports the witnesses is not conducting an investigation; it is closing one.

Whether the shooting was lawful cannot be established once the people who watched it are on planes.