HOUSTON--Hundreds of protesters assembled on Wednesday at the spot where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man driving to work a day earlier, the latest in a spate of deadly encounters involving expanded deportation raids nationwide.
The chanting demonstrators, many displaying Mexican flags and carrying signs that read, "Stand with immigrants" and "ICE out of Houston," echoed mounting demands for an independent inquiry into Tuesday's shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally. A contingent of police officers, some on horseback with helmets and riot gear, closed off surrounding streets to traffic and moved around the perimeter of the rally, which was boisterous but peaceful.
“It's not right. The people shouldn't be attacked the way that they are. Everything that's going on is wrong," Jose Valles, 51, who lives about a two-minute drive from the scene, said minutes before the crowd began marching to a nearby park.
The killing of 52-year-old Salgado, a construction worker who according to family had resided in Houston for over three decades and was close to obtaining legal U.S. residency, brought to at least six the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations. That crackdown has recently gained new momentum in cities across the country, with federal agents detaining around 2,000 migrants a day nationwide last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
In Houston alone, home to a large and deeply rooted Mexican immigrant community, the number of ICE arrests per week more than tripled from mid-June to late June -- to around 100 -- according to preliminary data shared with Reuters by a source.
In a statement issued Tuesday after the fatal shooting, ICE said that Salgado rammed his van into an ICE vehicle, refused to obey multiple verbal commands and tried to run over an officer, who then fired on him in "self-defense." Salgado was a Mexican national living illegally in the United States and was caught up in a "targeted enforcement operation" when ICE officers tried to stop his vehicle, the agency said.
Reuters could not verify the man's immigration status or the circumstances of the shooting in Houston's heavily Hispanic East End neighbourhood.
At a Wednesday news conference, Salgado's son Ronaldo described his father as a peaceful man who had spent the past 35 years in the country as a construction worker. "He dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream," Ronaldo said, adding that he had been working to get his legal immigration status and was close to securing it.
