Detainees tell their lawyer an ICE officer shot a Houston driver through a passenger window

Source: AP News

Three men inside a van who witnessed the fatal shooting of the driver by an immigration officer in Houston said the Mexican man was shot through a passenger window and that the officer was never threatened, a lawyer who has spoken with them said Friday.

The shooting Tuesday during an attempted traffic stop by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Houston has revived critical voices deriding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and how ICE operates. Immigration arrests around the country recently surged to 10,000 over a five-day period, fueled in part by massive Congressional funding.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has released no evidence to support the officer’s story that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo ignored their commands and rammed into an ICE vehicle with his white van, or that the officer fired in self-defense.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia has said the acting director of ICE told her officers thought someone in the van, but not Salgado Araujo, had a final order of removal but did not share a name.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/ice-shooting-houston-lorenzo-salgado-araugo-10cf77f29d4559f0f3796342b946031a