(CNN) — A witness to the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a federal immigration agent in Houston said Thursday he is traumatized and unable to sleep, especially since he says Salgado Araujo never posed a threat to officers and was going to surrender when his van was stopped.
ICE, in its initial statement early this month, said Salgado Araujo rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow commands before an agent fired his weapon in self-defense.
“That’s a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego, 51, a passenger in the van who was released from ICE custody Wednesday, said in an exclusive interview with CNN airing on Erin Burnett OutFront.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not directly respond to Rojas Pliego’s claim, saying it is investigating the agent-involved shooting while the Houston FBI looks into the potential assault on a federal officer.
Rojas Pliego told CNN’s Ed Lavandera he was devastated by the agents’ tactics, noting the van’s three passengers were forcefully removed from the vehicle and Salgado Araujo was mortally wounded, pulled out of the vehicle, thrown to the ground and lifted up to be handcuffed.
The fatal shooting was the latest case to garner extreme scrutiny and skepticism over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics and apparent rush to defend those involved.
“We were only going to work,” Rojas Pliego said. “I only ask for justice for him, his family and the workers.”
Salgado Araujo was behind the wheel of the van the morning of July 7 when ICE said he was shot while attempting to evade arrest during a traffic stop.
Rojas Pliego said “at no moment” were there agents in front of or behind the van during the stop. “He was going to surrender,” the witness said of Salgado Araujo, adding he never attacked or threatened officers.
Rojas Pliego entered the US in 1998, according to court documents. The Mexican immigrant has no criminal record in the US and is common-law married to an American citizen, according to a habeas corpus petition filed by his attorney.
Rojas Pliego’s attorney, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, told CNN his client has to wear an ankle monitor and report to ICE regularly after his release from detention. Rojas Pliego, who may qualify for a visa and work permit issued to crime victims, is in removal proceedings, according to the attorney.
“Things will never be the same with my family,” said Rojas Pliego, who referred to Salgado Araujo as “El Patron,” or The Boss. “I’m sad about … what I saw, since I was the one who witnessed it all.”
Though the agency described the incident as a “targeted enforcement operation,” it did not specify whether Salgado Araujo was the target. A source with preliminary details of the shooting said Salgado Araujo was not the target of the enforcement action.
Salgado Araujo’s family has disputed the government’s self-defense claim, saying they believe he would have stopped and complied with federal agents if he had known the cars following him belonged to ICE or other law enforcement. He had been seeking a work permit and had no criminal record, his family said.
The 52-year-old father of three encountered ICE agents as he picked up the last members of his construction crew in Houston’s East End area before heading north to finish construction on several houses, Salgado Araujo’s oldest son said. Because Salgado Araujo’s van and tools had been stolen in the past, he had been cautious about being followed, his son told CNN.
No video or photos of the traffic stop or the shooting have been released by federal officials. The officers involved had not been issued body-worn cameras, a DHS spokesperson told CNN.
The DHS’ Office of the Inspector General is now leading an investigation into the shooting, according to ICE. And the FBI’s Houston field office is investigating the alleged assault on a federal law enforcement officer.
Texas Democratic lawmakers, activists and Salgado Araujo’s family have called for an independent investigation into his death.
The case was the latest in which someone was severely injured or killed this year after being shot by a federal immigration enforcement agent — and raises questions again about who is targeted in a nationwide immigration crackdown the Trump administration says aims to remove dangerous criminals.
Shortly before the shooting, agents were investigating two Guatemalan men known to be driving a white van who had previously evaded arrest and were potentially subject to deportation, the US attorney for Texas’ southern district said.
While the agents searched for that van on the morning of July 7, officers received a report of a similar van in the area that then fled as the officers tried to pull it over, according to the US attorney, Aaron Reitz.
The three other men in the van, including Salgado Araujo’s brother, were detained.
A week after the shooting, the FBI filed a warrant application saying the agency had cause to believe that an investigator — after the shooting — saw illegal drugs in the vehicle longtime Texas resident Salgado Araujo had been driving.
The FBI’s suspicion about drugs became public after a court unsealed the warrant application. That drew pushback from Salgado Araujo’s family, whose lawyer said she believed the substance was salt, used to make a homemade electrolyte mix.
Testing later confirmed the substance not drugs, according to a spokesperson for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
The attorney for Salgado Araujo’s brother, who witnessed the shooting, said “an unproven claim was allowed to circulate before it was tested, and the way it was made public did real damage, diverting attention from what actually matters in this case.”
And even if it was drugs, District Attorney Sean Teare said, it should‘ve had no bearing on investigations into whether the killing of Salgado Araujo was justified, or whether the stop of the Mexican immigrant and his three passengers was warranted.
The-CNN-Wire
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