People grieve at a makeshift memorial to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a candlelight vigil on July 8, 2026 in Houston after Salgado was fatally shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Salgado “called Houston home for 35 years,” said New York’s democratic socialist mayor. “On Tuesday, an ICE agent shot and killed him.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday renewed his call to “abolish ICE” after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a man in Texas earlier this week.
“Lorenzo Salgado Araujo called Houston home for 35 years. On Tuesday, an ICE agent shot and killed him,” Mamdani said on social media. “His family learned of his death from a video before anyone bothered to knock on their door.”
“New York City stands with the Salgado family in demanding a full, independent investigation and real accountability,” the mayor added. “To the Salgado family and any immigrant family in this city living in fear: We grieve with you, and we will continue to stand beside you in the pursuit of justice.”
More than 1,000 people gathered in Houston’s East End on Wednesday evening to denounce ICE and remember Salgado, a 52-year-old married father of three originally from Mexico who, according to relatives, was in the process of legalizing his status in the United States.
Salgado’s son, school teacher Ronaldo Salgado, said that his father had “dedicated his life to giving his family the American dream.”
Salgado was driving in the Magnolia Park neighborhood to pick up his construction crew on Tuesday morning when an unidentified ICE agent fatally shot him during an enforcement operation. ICE claimed that Salgado tried to evade arrest and threatened agents with his vehicle, but his family, civil rights advocates, and community leaders strongly dispute that account, pointing to surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts that they argue undermine the agency’s narrative.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The New York Times late on Thursday that neither Salgado nor any of his three passengers were the targets of ICE enforcement, but that they drew agents’ attention because one of them resembled a wanted man from Guatemala.
Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups have joined Salgado’s relatives in demanding an independent investigation of his killing.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Thursday that her government plans to file criminal complaints in the United States in connection with 14 Mexican nationals who died in ICE custody. Sheinbaum added that Salgado’s killing “is not only sad and regrettable, but also appears to have been targeted.”
On-duty officers from ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agencies have fatally shot at least four other people during President Donald Trump’s deadly second-term crackdown on undocumented immigrants: Silverio Villegas González of Mexico and US citizens Ruben Ray Martinez, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti.
At least dozens of people have also died in ICE custody or shortly after being released during Trump’s second term. Last month, ICE announced that it was rescinding a 2021 Biden administration policy requiring congressional notification and an investigation whenever a detainee died within 30 days of their release.
Protesters and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents face off in Minneapolis following the January 13, 2026 fatal shooting of Renee Good. (Photo by Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Human Rights Watch said of the deadly blitz.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday published a scathing report detailing how President Donald Trump “caused a human rights crisis” in Minnesota by ordering the deadly federal invasion of the Twin Cities in service of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
HRW called Operation Metro Surge, launched by Trump last December, “an unprecedented deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents and officers to the state of Minnesota,” including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The Trump administration claimed that Operation Metro Surge was designed to keep Americans safe and often stated that it was targeting noncitizens with violent criminal histories,” the report states. “But the operation itself caused significant harm, and nearly two out of three immigrants arrested by ICE during Operation Metro Surge had no prior US criminal history whatsoever.”
At least three people have been killed in connection with the operation. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7. A week later, 36-year-old Nicaraguan detainee Victor Manuel Díaz, who was arrested during the operation, became the third person to die at the notorious East Montana concentration camp in Texas. On January 24, CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, also in Minneapolis.
“Federal agents shot a third Minneapolis resident and pulled guns on dozens more,” the report continues. “Agents also violently smashed car windows without justification, physically threw people to the ground who were not resisting arrest, and deployed chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades on dozens of occasions, sometimes at close range and without warning, resulting in injuries, including to journalists.”
Furthermore, federal agents “unlawfully arrested and detained hundreds; engaged in racial profiling, harassment, and surveillance; and terrorized Minnesotans, chilling their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and impacting their rights to education and health, among others,” HRW said, adding that “residents faced further abuses when they collectively acted to protest, prevent, and stop these violations of their rights.”
The HRW report calls for an immediate end to abusive federal enforcement operations in Minnesota; independent investigations into alleged unlawful killings, racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, excessive force, and other rights violations; and full accountability for officials responsible.
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Reagan Williams, HRW’s crisis and conflict researcher, said in a statement. “Minnesotans mobilized to protest, to document abuse, and to provide critical aid to one another. National-level action is needed to ensure accountability, end ongoing abuses, remedy the harm, and prevent another crisis of this scale.”
“Operation Metro Surge put the violent and abusive practices of these agencies on full display,” Williams added. “We have clear proof of how they operate when impunity prevails, and we need to urgently chart a new way forward through accountability and structural reforms that put an end to these abuses.”
Large white tents and steel fencing at Camp East Montana at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas. Photograph: AP
Detainees tell of abuse at sprawling Texas facility whose giant generators gobble energy and fuel climate crisis
Dust was everywhere, covering people’s blankets and clogging their airways inside Camp East Montana, the huge tent facility for immigration detention in west Texas, said D, a young Venezuelan man who was held there.
The air conditioning blasted constantly, keeping the living areas inside tents the length of two football fields at what felt like near-freezing temperatures despite the balmy weather outside, and rain leaked through the tarps, so people awoke on wet mattresses, he recalled.
“Everyone was coughing a lot – and with the same problem to breathe,” said D, who has since been released and spoke with the Guardian via video interview.
Camp East Montana is the facility with the largest number of immigration-related detainees in the US, with a capacity of 5,000 and an estimated daily average of 2,505 locked up. After just nine months in operation it has become a health and human rights scandal – and also an environmental hazard that affects the inhabitants and the area, while fueling the climate crisis.
Reports of harsh conditions, abuse, sickness and death have accumulated since the camp was erected last summer on the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso. And flying thousands of people often hundreds of miles to be locked up in an encampment run on electricity generators in the desert gobbles energy and produces emissions that are heating the planet.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
A federal immigration agent fatally shot Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old US citizen, early on March 15, 2025 in South Padre Island, Texas. (Photo by Rachel Reyes/Mission Park Funeral Chapels & Cemeteries)
“Americans deserve immediate answers and an independent investigation of the shooting,” said Congressman Greg Casar.
Demands for accountability are mounting after internal records revealed this week that an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations fatally shot Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old US citizen, almost a year ago in South Padre Island, Texas.
“While Martinez’s death was reported in local media at the time, the reports did not identify HSI involvement or disclose that a federal agent fired the shots through the driver-side window,” Newsweekreported, citing publicly available information and records obtained by American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“It shouldn’t take 11 months and a FOIA lawsuit to learn that the government killed someone,” American Oversight said on social media late Friday. Separately, the watchdog noted that “the details sound similar to the death of Renee Good,” a 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three fatally shot by officer Jonathan Ross last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Good’s killing, and two Customs and Border Protection agents’ subsequent fatal shooting of 37-year-old US citizen and nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, have fueled outrage over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, resulting in a congressional funding fight that has partially shut down the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees both agencies.
ICE’s internal report on the Texas shooting states that HSI agents were helping redirect traffic at the site of a major accident early on March 15, 2025. Martinez and his passengers aren’t named, but the document claims that the driver of a blue four-door Ford “failed to follow instructions,” including verbal commands to stop and exit the vehicle.
Instead, the driver “accelerated forward, striking a HSI special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle. Upon observing this, HSI group supervisory special agent utilized his government-issued service weapon, discharging multiple rounds at the driver through the open driver’s side window,” according to the ICE report—a version of events that a DHS spokesperson echoed in a Friday statement added to the Newsweek article, which was initially published Wednesday.
The DHS spokesperson also said that the incident remains under investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Ranger Division, whose press secretary, Sheridan Nolen, confirmed that “this is still an active investigation by the Texas Rangers, and no other information is currently available.”
Back in March LAST YEAR, ICE shot and killed a US citizen teenager through his car window, and it never admitted its role. ICE claims it was assisting traffic control (!?!) when the driver didn't follow its instructions. Fake cops. How many other killings are they concealing?
Charles Stam, a lawyer for the Martinez family, told the New York Times that the 23-year-old was the driver in the ICE report. Stam and another attorney, Alex Stamm, also said in a statement that eyewitness accounts of the scene don’t match the document.
“It is critical that there is a full and fair investigation into why HSI was present at the scene of a traffic collision and why a federal officer shot and killed a US citizen as he was trying to comply with instructions from the local law enforcement officers directing traffic,” the lawyers said.
The Times also reached Martinez’s mother, Rachel Reyes, who said her son worked at an Amazon warehouse in San Antonio and was out to celebrate his birthday. According to her: “He was a good kid. He doesn’t have a criminal history… He never got in trouble. He was never violent.”
Reyes challenged the federal government’s narrative about her son, telling the newspaper: “What they’re saying is different from what they told the family, so that’s adding insult to injury… They are making it sound different. I don’t appreciate their language.”
In a Friday interview with the Texas Tribune, American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu also called out the government: “What they’re telling the public is very different than what they’re doing behind closed doors. The only reason why we’re able to make these connections and really call into question the public statements that they’re making to mislead the public is because we’re able to get our hands on these documents… That should deeply concern everyone.”
The revelations this week have generated concern. André Treiber, the Democratic National Committee’s Youth Coordinating Council chair, wrote on social media Friday evening that “ICE murdered a Texan last March and we are only just learning about it now. They are once again offering the excuse that this was done in self-defense, but forgive me if I am extremely skeptical after they’ve been caught lying about that exact same thing multiple times already.”
Another death. Another truth coming out late. Another failure of accountability.Ruben Martinez should still be alive.ICE has killed multiple people, and we're still uncovering cases after the fact. This is what unchecked power looks like. It must stop.
Federal lawmakers also sounded the alarm on Friday. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) declared that “Americans deserve immediate answers and an independent investigation of the shooting.” Another Texas Democrat, Congressman Joaquin Castro, similarly called for “a full investigation,” including into the monthslong “cover-up.”
US Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), whose Chicagoland district has also faced a recent ICE invasion, pointed to other deaths tied to the agency, including those of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, who was shot by ICE in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park last September; Keith Porter Jr., who was shot by an off-duty agent on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, California; and Linda Davis, a special education teacher in Savannah, Georgia, who was killed in a Monday car crash that involved a man fleeing ICE.
“For a whole year, DHS hid that they murdered Ruben, a young man in Texas, after a traffic stop. Just like they did with Silverio, Renee, Keith, Alex, and Linda, they lied and avoided accountability,” said Ramirez, who supports abolishing ICE. “How many more people have to be executed before my colleagues realize that reforms are not enough?”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
2-Month-Old infant Juan Nicolás has been detained at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas since January and was hospitalized on February 16, 2026. (Photo: @lidiaterrazasnews/Instagram)
The hospitalization came two days after the baby had a previous medical episode in which he was reportedly “choking on his own vomit.”
As advocates including US Rep. Joaquin Castro demanded the immediate release of a 2-month-old baby, Juan Nicolás, who has been detained with his mother at Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas for close to half of his young life, the infant was rushed to a hospital early in the morning on Tuesday after suffering from respiratory issues and vomiting in recent days.
Lidia Terrezas, a reporter for Univision, spoke to officials at the Dilley detention center and reported in an Instagram video that Juan Nicolás had been transported via ambulance at about 7:00 pm Central time. KABB Fox News 29 in San Antonio reported Tuesday morning that the baby had been “treated and released.”
“It’s unclear what happened for them to take him to the hospital,” said Terrezas. “It is my understanding that he was taken by ambulance. So at some point the decision was made that he should be taken to a hospital immediately.”
The reported hospitalization came two days after the baby had “a medical episode at approximately 3:00 am Saturday,” according to the San Antonio Current, and hours after Castro (D-Texas) provided an update about the infant’s condition after being detained at Dilley nearly a month ago.
“He’s been sick consistently,” said Castro in a video posted on X. “He was vomiting, he’s been having respiratory issues. They came to check on him when he was having these issues, but they couldn’t take him to see a doctor because there was no doctor in the early morning hours at Dilley.”
During an earlier visit to Dilley, Castro saw the facility’s medical wing, complete with beds for children and families who need medical attention at the center built to hold up to 2,400 people—but witnessed no actual medical providers working there.
“These kids should be released, and these folks who have committed no crime should not be in this trailer prison,” said Castro.
In his earlier medical episode, Juan Nicolás was described as “choking on his own vomit.”
“This baby in particular is very vulnerable,” said Castro Monday. “For those of you that are parents… you know how vulnerable kids are at the age of 2 months. And so I have been pressing [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] hard to let Juan Nicolás go free… They are on notice that he has been sick, that they don’t have the medical capacity to treat him properly, and that his life, if this continues, could be in danger.”
CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs Dilley, claims the medical wing is fully staffed and offers 24/7 care, according toNBC News Channel 4 in San Antonio.
But Castro’s report of the facility’s failure to provide medical care is not incongruous with numerous reports of medical neglect at other detention centers where ICE is detaining tens of thousands of people, including about 170 children on any given day, on average.
Detainees have reported being unable to access medical care at facilities including Krome North Service Processing Center in Florida; North Lake Processing Center in Michigan, where an immigrant named Nenko Stanev Gantchev was found dead in his cell in December; and Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, where at least three people have died in 44 days recently.
El Paísreported on Monday on medical neglect of children at Dilley. A 5-year-old boy suffered acute appendicitis “with severe pain,” according to the newspaper.
“The staff member responsible for attending to him told his mother to come back in three days if the pain continued,” reported El País. “He lay on the floor in agony for hours until, after they saw him vomiting, he was finally taken to a doctor and eventually underwent surgery. After he was discharged from the hospital, it was difficult to obtain the medication he had been prescribed.”
The 1997 Flores Agreement set a 20-day maximum for children to be held in immigration detention, but with Juan Nicolás detained for about three and a half weeks, according to Castro, the baby is one of hundreds of children who have been held at Dilley for at least a month.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
