Houston (AFP) – The son of a Mexican man fatally shot by US immigration officials in Texas demanded an investigation on Wednesday, with a leading civil rights group calling it a “possible murder.” Lorenzo Salgado was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Houston, Texas, early on Tuesday, marking the first fatal shooting involving US immigration officers since two January killings in the northern city of Minneapolis that drew national headlines.
“He did not deserve to die,” Ronaldo Salgado, the deceased man’s oldest son, said at a press conference. “He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father and a job creator for dozens of men who also wanted the American dream.” The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of which ICE is a part, said that the officer fired in self-defense after Lorenzo Salgado rammed his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle and attempted to run down an officer.
After the killing of protester Renee Good in January by an ICE officer, DHS made similar allegations, though video from the incident drew widespread debate over whether she was merely attempting to flee and the proportionality of the response. Another protester, Alex Pretti, was killed by US Customs and Border Protection officers later that month. A further furor was ignited over federal investigators excluding state and local agencies from participating in an investigation.
In an emotional press conference, the younger Salgado said his father had worked for 30 years as a builder in the Houston area and was “close to obtaining his legal status.” A leading Hispanic civil rights advocacy group, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), joined in the call for an investigation. “The agency whose officers fired the weapon cannot be the agency that controls the narrative and the evidence at the same time,” the group’s CEO, Juan Proano, said. “State and local authorities in Texas must not be locked out of the death that happened on Texas soil.”
The chairman of LULAC’s political arm called on the local sheriff and police chief to lead independent investigations into what he called “a murder of a resident, and the father of several citizens,” because “we don’t expect the truth from the Department of Justice or from the FBI.” “We expect a whitewash.” In a statement after the shooting, DHS said that the FBI will investigate “the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
© 2024 AFP
