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Salgado Araujo’s killing is the latest in a string of deaths related to immigration enforcement under US President Donald Trump, who has led a mass deportation drive since the start of his second term.
Lawyer Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said all three men in the van with Salgado Araujo reject a Department of Homeland (DHS) statement saying that the father of three “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle” and “weaponised his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement”.
Instead, the three men said there had been no ramming and that the ICE agent had opened fire from the passenger side window.
“After speaking with these three men that were in the vehicle with Lorenzo, I have no doubt that what these ICE agents are saying is completely false,” Balderas-Ibarra said.
“At no point did they ever use the van to ram into the ICE agents, and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger.”
Salgado Araujo and the three men were on their way to a job site when they were stopped by immigration officials. All four were living in the US without documentation, though they were reportedly not ICE’s intended target.
Balderas-Ibarra also recounted the last words of Salgado Araugo.
“Ya me mataron,” he said, using the Spanish phrase for “They’ve already killed me.”
Calls for investigation
Salgado Araujo’s killing has sparked new condemnation of the tactics used by federal immigration agents, who have been accused of excessive violence, racial profiling and bypassing civil rights protections.
His death has also renewed criticism of how Trump administration officials respond to incidents of agent-involved violence.
Critics point out that, in many high-profile cases, top government figures have framed the victims as aggressors.
In January, for instance, immigration enforcement agents shot and killed two US citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in separate incidents in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem quickly described both victims as perpetrating acts of “domestic terrorism”. But evidence in both cases contradicted the officials’ initial accounts, either in part or in whole.
In the case of Good, video appears to show an ICE agent standing in front of her stopped vehicle. She can be seen turning her wheels in an apparent effort to drive around the officer, who opened fire after stepping to the side of her SUV.
In Pretti’s case, footage showed immigration agents wrestling him to the ground as he sought to film them on his phone. An agent is then seen removing a gun from Pretti’s holster, which he was legally allowed to carry, before another officer opens fire and fatally shoots him.
Investigations into both incidents have yielded few answers.
In a separate case, an ICE agent was arrested in May after he faced accusations of making false reports in the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man.
Family and lawmakers have called for an independent probe into the killing of Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the US for 35 years and had no criminal record.
His family, including his three adult sons, said he was in the process of applying for legal status when he was killed.
“He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of ‘Mexican man shot and killed by ICE’,” his son Ronaldo Salgado said during a news conference this week.
“He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father and a job creator for dozens of men who also wanted the American dream.”
On Thursday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government will ask US prosecutors to open criminal investigations into the deaths of its citizens during immigration enforcement operations. %!s(
