“They Were Hunting for Latinos”: LULAC CEO on ICE Killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston

“They were hunting for Latinos.” Outcry is continuing over the ICE shooting death of 52-year-old Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a majority-Latino neighborhood in Houston, Texas, last week. Events pieced together by eyewitness videos and texts sent by the agents involved in Araujo’s killing suggest that agents largely ignored Araujo’s cries for help after he was shot. “They really just strung him along for hours until finally sending him to the hospital,” says Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, the largest and oldest Latino civil rights organization in the United States. Meanwhile, the three men carpooling with Araujo to work are still languishing in ICE detention, where they were initially pressured to sign self-deportation orders. “But the fact of the matter is, we need them to stay in the United States. They are witnesses to a crime, and the only witnesses to what actually happened on that day.”

Houston police have begun investigating the shooting as a homicide, “but my expectation is that their investigation will similarly be hampered by DHS,” says Proaño. “I don’t believe there will be justice here. There’s no way to bring him back.”