One week, two killings: Trump’s immigration crackdown turns deadly – again | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was driving to work in Houston, Texas, with his brother and two other passengers when immigration agents began following his car. They pulled him over and fired a fatal shot through the open passenger side window.
Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was walking through her neighborhood when agents stopped her at an intersection just outside the laundromat she frequented with her three-year-old daughter and shot her to death.
Two murders in less than a week sent waves of sadness and anger across the United States. Demonstrators gathered in both cities to once again demand that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency tasked with carrying out Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation plan, take its agents off the streets.
To fulfill Trump’s promise of mass detention and deportation, military-equipped immigration officers are violently detaining immigrants at traffic stops and outside big box stores, bus stops, warehouses, farms, schools and churches in communities across the United States.
Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero were the 29th and 30th people immigration officials opened fire on since Trump took office last year. traceAn organization that monitors these armed attacks within its own organization Gun Violence Data Center. Officers killed eight of these people, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti; US citizens shot during a military enforcement operation in Minnesota.
This week, another man who escaped from immigration in Florida died after being hit by a truck. Twenty-two people have died in ICE custody this year, including in immigration detention centers.
The last two shootings echoed each other and those that came before.
It turned out that neither victim was the real target of the immigration officers’ operation. Mexican Salgado Araujo had been living and working in the United States for 35 years. He was a husband and father of three U.S. citizen children. Colombian Durán Guerrero was working multiple jobs to support his wife and daughter.
Salgado Araujo’s eldest son, Ronaldo, said he saw a video of his father’s shooting on Facebook and immediately recognized him by his voice crying for help. Neighbors told the Portland Press Herald that after Durán Guerrero was killed, they saw his partner and daughter (in the three-year-old’s Bluey pajamas) rush outside and heard their screams ringing out in the street.
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and US border patrol He quickly followed up each attack with statements, but no evidence that the victims were guilty. DHS said Salgado Araujo “armed his vehicle” against officers; this mirrored the language used after officers killed Good and other people the agents shot. DHS said the officers who shot at Durán Guerrero did so “out of fear for public safety.” Videos of eyewitnesses of each incident already cast doubt on these official statements.
Call for responsibility: ‘This must stop’
The shootings mobilized thousands of protesters and led to calls from local leaders and civil rights groups for an independent investigation. Thousands of protesters marched in Houston to demand that ICE leave the city entirely and that the Houston police department end all cooperation with the agency. In addition to demanding a thorough city-led investigation, they are also demanding that DHS release the names of the ICE agents involved and that three witnesses who were in the vehicle with Salgado Araujo when he was shot be released from immigration detention.
A week after the shooting, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of Houston City Hall and chanted: “Justicia para Lorenzo!” – Justice for Lorenzo! More than a hundred Houstonians signed up to urge Mayor John Whitmire and the city council to take action during lawmakers’ first meeting since the killing of Salgada Araujo.
in Maine, hundreds of Large numbers of people took to the streets of Biddeford and held an evening vigil for Durán Guerrero. But many of his friends were afraid of public speaking. based on to Maine Public — because they feared ICE would retaliate against them and others in the city’s Latino immigrant community. In an interview with telemundoDurán Guerrero fatherOmar said his son “has a strong vision to move forward and has many dreams to realize.”
Even the scenes of mourning were familiar. At the memorial for Salgado Araujo, volunteers were sharing “know your rights” pamphlets with mourners and neighbors, just as volunteers did near where Good and Pretti were killed.
“No one should have to learn their rights at a memorial service for their neighbor,” said Neidi Dominguez, executive director of the advocacy group Organized Power in Numbers. “But that’s where we’re at right now.”
Advocates are increasingly grappling with a bigger question: What happens when ICE violates people’s rights with apparent impunity? Jasmine Khadem Gonzalez, an immigrant rights organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America in Houston, said her training now includes instructions for documenting agents in the field — noting badge numbers, license plates and timestamps and filming the agents — to create a reliable record of violations.
On Houston’s Canal Street, Where residents left candles and flowers near where Salgado Araujo was killed, people were grappling with what it meant for ICE’s violence to reach them and their communities.
“We watched this happen in Los Angeles last year and taught our students about it, and then it’s happening to us in Chicago and Minneapolis and now it’s happening to us here,” said JoAnna Rodriguez, who teaches the history of Mexican American communities, known as Chicano history, at the local arts center she founded. Salgado lives two blocks from where Araujo was killed. “We’ve always been afraid, and it’s getting worse. This has to end.”
An overloaded deportation campaign
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus is now highest funded Law enforcement in the USA. Last month, the president signed a bill allocating $70 billion to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $38 billion for ICE to expand its arrest, detention, and deportation operations.
In recent months, the administration has hired thousands of new immigration agents; many of these had not undergone proper review and were of questionable quality. At the same time, the government is closing immigration offices tasked with investigating deaths and civil rights violations.
Following public outrage over the killings of Good’s and Pretti in Minneapolis and mass nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s militarized immigration raids in cities across the US, Trump signaled a change in tactics. He demoted Gregory Bovino, the flamboyant Border Patrol agent who led groups of armed, masked agents through cities with a film crew, and fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Senior DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, who was notorious for making patently false public statements, also left her post.
DHS has pledged to equip all its agents with body cameras. However this doesn’t exist was fully enforced, and the officers who captured Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero were not wearing cameras. Following the murder of Durán Guerrero, the administration ordered the federal immigration office to stop vehicles – and then the president broke the pause.
Most immigration arrests in recent months have been carried out by police, sheriffs and members of other state and local law enforcement agencies tasked by the federal government to conduct immigration sweeps. In many places, bystanders didn’t know whether drivers were pulled over for an actual traffic violation or because an officer was interested in checking their immigration status.
Although there are fewer and fewer sightings of roving caravans of immigration officials wearing masks, the administration has not slowed its campaign of mass deportations. Officers still detain immigrants at their workplaces, at routine check-in appointments, outside their homes or at traffic stops.
Arrests occur routinely; in many cases before neighbors and bystanders realize what is going on. “This is happening so quickly, so people can’t go there to observe, record what they see and report it,” said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. “And often all that’s left is an empty car sitting there.”
ICE agents target not only immigrants in major cities, but also immigrants in smaller cities and towns across the United States. In Iowa, attorneys have noticed an increase in targeted arrests at people’s homes; Among those detained were a delivery service driver from Türkiye and a Fijian citizen who came to the United States on a student visa. This month in Wisconsin, lawyers have noticed an uptick in arrests in suburban neighborhoods; agents pursued and stopped immigrants, including those with work permits and legal status, who were driving in the suburbs of Milwaukee and Greenfield.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that immigration authorities detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days of June.
In the wake of this week’s killings, ICE issued statements emphasizing that the agency arrests the “worst of the worst,” including “murderers, pedophiles, violent attackers, and drug traffickers.” But data analyzed by the Guardian and others shows that the vast majority of people ICE arrests have no criminal convictions.
Immigration attorneys and attorneys are preparing for more arrests to come. A recent supreme court ruling would allow the administration to revoke the designation of what is known as temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, eliminating the legal status of nearly 1.3 million people. Those who cannot quickly find another legal means to reside in the United States may be subject to immediate arrest and deportation.
In Houston, residents said they will continue the fight against ICE and protect their families and neighbors whose lives are in danger.
“We must stop mincing words… ICE is a domestic terrorist organization,” said immigrant rights organizer Jasmine Khadem Gonzalez. “They are killing our fathers in cold blood on the streets all over the country.”
