Austinites Honor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Demand ICE Accountability

Austinites filed behind one another to lay flowers next to a photo of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo surrounded by marigolds, monarch butterflies, and serapes on an assembled altar last Saturday evening, July 11.

Hundreds gathered at the Wildflower Church in Central Austin to honor Salgado Araujo’s life and call for accountability in solidarity with his family. The longtime Houston resident and father was fatally shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents early last Tuesday morning, July 7, in the city’s East End neighborhood.

While driving a van with other passengers to work early on Tuesday, Salgado Araujo was closely trailed and cut off by ICE agents driving unmarked black SUVs, according to surveillance video. The ICE agent then shot Salgado Araujo in the torso “from the passenger side where his brother was sitting,” according to Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, an attorney representing other passengers who were in the van.

Organizers of the vigil, which included several Austin nonprofits and labor unions, called for a “full, transparent, and independent investigation” into Salgado Araujo’s death, as well as “the release of Lorenzo’s body to his family, the release of all evidence and video footage, protection for the witnesses, [and] accountability for those responsible,” organizer Juany Torres told the Chronicle.

During the vigil, other individuals reported to have been killed by ICE agents were also named aloud and honored alongside Salgado Araujo. “We demand that those in positions of institutional power ensure no more deaths occur at the hands of ICE,” Torres continued.

An altar honoring Lorenzo Salgado Araujo at the Wildflower Church on Saturday, June 11 Credit: Sammie Seamon

“So many of your sons and daughters have died … in detention centers and on the streets at the hands of these agents of violence,” one community member prayed aloud in Spanish during the vigil. “Give us the courage to keep raising our voices against this brutality.”

In a July 7 statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleged that Salgado Araujo “attempted to evade arrest” and had “weaponized his vehicle,” leading the agent to fire “his weapon in self-defense.”

On July 12, Balderas-Ibarra reported that based on the passengers’ accounts, the ICE agents “ran up on them” and had shot Salgado Araujo while “the van was already in park.” He pressed that DHS’s statement is “very inconsistent” with the accounts of the other passengers.

“At no point did they ever use the van to ram into the ICE agents, and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,” Balderas-Ibarra said in a video posted to social media last week.

Federal authorities have admitted that Salgado Araujo was not the individual they were looking for in the East Houston neighborhood, according to CNN, and that the agents involved were not wearing body cameras during the incident.

During the vigil, other community members who have been detained or whose families have been affected by ICE called for accountability and immigration reform. 

“It’s terrible to know that our money, our taxes are being used to murder [members of] our community,” Sulma Franco of Grassroots Leadership said in Spanish. “That money should be going to our schools, our hospitals, and our community.”

“I think of the children who are missing their fathers, of the mothers who don’t know when they will next hug their children,” another individual said in Spanish. “Many times, I ask myself a question that breaks my heart: Will I be able to leave for work and return home to my children?”

“We all breathe the same air. … We all deserve to live with dignity. We all deserve to come back home,” she later continued. “When one family suffers, we all suffer from the injustice.”

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