Nationwide vigils mourn those who died in ICE operations
July 25 Day of Action honored Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and others, as families of two US citizens killed by DHS agents demanded accountability
NEW YORK (MNTV) — Activists, clergy, and community members held vigils across the United States to mourn those who have died in immigration enforcement operations and to demand accountability for a crackdown that has repeatedly turned lethal.
The July 25 Day of Action was organized with support from the Disappeared in America project hosted by Public Citizen, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, The Workers Circle, Detention Watch Network, and LULAC.
Participants remembered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero, Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, and others whose deaths have come to stand for the human cost of aggressive enforcement.
LULAC CEO Juan Proano said both immigrants and US citizens have been harmed by federal agents, describing the dead as members of families and communities.
In Minnesota’s Twin Cities, demonstrators honored Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two US citizens fatally shot by Department of Homeland Security agents in January — deaths that crystallize the risk the expanded operations pose even to citizens, including those who document them. Six months on, Pretti’s mother, Susan, condemned the absence of accountability, her grief a measure of how little answer families have received.
In Chicago, where the administration ran Operation Midway Blitz with hundreds of federal personnel, demonstrators marched from Grant Park through downtown, describing an atmosphere of fear across immigrant communities regardless of status.
Vigils also filled Los Angeles — where marchers carried cardboard coffins for the dead — along with Pasadena, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, and the Washington area.
Clergy framed the enforcement as a moral question, and organizers argued the operations have long since stopped targeting only serious offenders, sweeping up people with deep American roots and corroding trust between communities and government.
The names read aloud are the same ones running through this desk’s reporting for weeks, and the vigils gathered them into a single accounting: a system that keeps killing and has yet to answer for it.
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