Human Rights Watch flags Houston ICE shooting as latest in fatal trend

An ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7. Salgado left behind a wife and three children, and his son Ronaldo spoke at a July 8 press conference about his father’s devotion to family.

DHS said Salgado “weaponized his vehicle,” a formulation Human Rights Watch says echoes disputed accounts from earlier ICE killings. The group is pressing Congress to expand oversight and is also calling on local Houston authorities to investigate.

DHS has a department-wide use-of-force policy, and ICE has its own firearms and use-of-force directive covering training, reporting and firearms procedures. DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics publishes annual use-of-force data across the department’s law enforcement agencies. The Southern Border Communities Coalition has tracked “fatal encounters” involving CBP and ICE since 2010, defining them as deaths that occur during or shortly after an apprehension-related contact. One coalition count puts the toll at more than 150 deaths in encounters with CBP agents since January 2010, and another puts it at 372 people who have died as a result of CBP encounters since 2010.

Human Rights Watch says federal agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026, after the January 7 killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in the same city. The group also says a September 2025 ICE shooting of Silverio Villegas González near Chicago was called into question by CCTV footage.

The latest killing came just days after another ICE-involved shooting in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13. A 26-year-old Colombian man was killed there. Immigrant-rights groups identified him as authorized to work in the United States and in possession of a Social Security number. Sen. Angus King’s office said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the man was not the target of the warrant, while ICE said it had been surveilling the last known address of a person with a final order of removal when the vehicle tried to flee and an officer fired out of fear for public safety. The Maine Attorney General’s Office and the FBI are investigating, and the officer has been placed on leave.

More than a thousand people marched in Houston after Salgado’s death, chanting “ICE out of Houston,” and demonstrators stormed Sen. Susan Collins’ Biddeford office in Maine.