Protests in Houston continue over ICE killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

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The protesters marched from the Ervan Chew Park on Sunday and briefly shut down a bridge on Dunlavy Street, according to local media and videos posted online, holding banners that read, “Abolish ICE” and “Justice for Lorenzo”. Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, was fatally shot by an ICE agent while he was driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston in southern Texas. The protests come amid mounting scrutiny of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. According to the Associated Press news agency, encounters with ICE have resulted in at least 10 deaths since the start of Trump’s second term last year. Two of those happened in the days after Salgado Araujo’s killing, in the states of Maine and Florida. After the shooting in Houston, ICE claimed Salgado Araujo had attempted to ram an agent who fired his weapon in self-defense. But a statement issued on Thursday by the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas made no mention any collision between Salgado Araujo’s van and a law enforcement vehicle, nor did it explicitly state that the officer feared for his life. In a video posted online by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a campaign group, an activist at Sunday’s march called for further protests to shut down the city. “We need to show ICE, the Trump administration and the entire country that the city of Houston is not be messed with,” the protestor said. “We cannot just sit here and let ICE hunt and murder more of our daughters, our brothers, our uncles. If we want justice, we have to demand it,” she said. The activist said the “shut down” of Houston will take place on Friday, July 24. Sunday’s protest followed similar rallies held across the country on Saturday, including in Portland, Maine — where, days earlier, Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in nearby Biddeford. On Saturday, Duran Guerrero’s family paid tribute to the father of a three-year-old girl, telling the Telemundo news network that he still had “many dreams to fulfil”. Democratic lawmakers have meanwhile demanded an investigation into ICE’s hiring practices, after it was alleged that the officer responsible for Duran Guerrero’s killing had a history of mental health issues and had subjected his ex-wife to violent and threatening behaviour. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi congressman and the top Democrat on the US House’s homeland security committee, told the AP that the officer’s alleged violent history “directly call[s] into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits”. Following the killings, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said the agency would start a “short pause” on traffic stops. And on Sunday, he announced that ICE will now require at least one agent to wear a body cam during vehicle stops. “I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,” he told the Fox & Friends Weekend programme. Trump meanwhile has urged the agency to continue traffic stops despite the killings. “We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.‘s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.” In addition to the deaths, at least 13 people have been wounded since Trump’s immigration crackdown began, according to The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub. At least 52 people have also died while in ICE detention, according to Human Rights Watch. 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