ICE Wasn't Looking for Man They Killed in Houston

The Houston man killed by federal immigration agents on Tuesday wasn't the person they were looking for. The agents were actually tracking two Guatemalan nationals and believed one was in the white van driven by 52-year-old Mexican citizen Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, sources tell the New York Times. Neither Guatemalan was in the vehicle; Araujo was on his way to work with three other men when ICE agents tried to stop the vehicle. The encounter escalated, and an agent shot Araujo in the abdomen. He died at a hospital hours later. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman confirmed to the Times that the agents were looking for a different person.

• "After receiving a credible tip from our law enforcement partners, our officers conducted surveillance on a target's address. Weeks prior to the incident, they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target's address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop," the agency said in a statement to KHOU 11.
• Officials say Araujo tried to ram officers with his van, but they've released no video supporting that claim, and the agents were not wearing body cameras. Araujo's family and advocates are calling for an independent probe, noting previous immigration-enforcement shootings where video later undercut official accounts. Civil rights attorney Domingo Garcia says ICE has changed its story. "Originally a targeted operation and Lorenzo was a target," he says. Now they are saying wrong target."

The DHS inspector general and the FBI are investigating, with the latter focusing on what authorities describe as an assault on a federal officer. Araujo had been in the US with legal status for around 35 years. His relatives say he was a homebuilder, the father of three US citizens, and was close to obtaining legal status. Authorities say he had no criminal convictions. On Wednesday, Ronaldo Salgado, the eldest of his three sons, said his father had studied what to do if stopped by ICE but may have feared that agents in unmarked vehicles were carjackers seeking to steal his tools. "This is outrageous to me, and this is ridiculous to hear that no one in that van was a target of any sort of investigation," he said Thursday after learning that the agents hadn't been looking for his father.