FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 9, 2026
CONTACT
Lilly Gonzalez, media@nipnlg.org
Washington, DC — On the morning of July 7, ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, while he was on his way to work in Houston’s East End. Agents left him bleeding and crying for help on the street.
In response, National Immigration Project Executive Director Sirine Shebaya issued the following statement:
"Once more, our hearts break for a family shattered by another violent death at the hands of ICE. Many of us at the National Immigration Project are immigrants ourselves, or children of immigrants. We look at Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and see our own fathers. The videos of his final moments are everywhere now, and we can neither watch them nor look away. This is a different kind of exhaustion, the exhaustion of grief, and our communities carry it every single day.
We have heard ICE’s self-defense story so many times we can recite it before the agency does. We know they lie; they have lied before. In Minneapolis. In Oregon. And when video surfaced and exposed those lies, no one was held accountable. The same story, the same silence, again and again.
They are counting on our collective exhaustion. It is the strategy itself: wear us down with one raid, one shooting, one harmful court decision after another, until we are too depleted to do anything but submit. But their strategy will not work.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo raised three sons in this country. He lived here for 35 years and worked from sunrise to sunset to provide for his family. Hundreds of Houston homes stand today because of his hands.
For Lorenzo, and for the many others who have died at the hands of ICE or in its custody, we refuse to surrender to that exhaustion. For our parents and loved ones, we stay in this fight.
We demand an independent investigation into Lorenzo’s killing and full accountability for the agent who pulled the trigger. An agency that kills like this and buries the truth cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.
Hold your people close. We are all we have."
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