Lorenzo Salgado Araujo: After his fatal shooting in Houston, ICE faces a familiar test of credibility

It has become an all-too-familiar pattern:

An immigration officer engaged in President Donald Trump’s nationwide enforcement surge opens fire and injures or kills someone. Mere hours after the shooting and before the results of a conclusive investigation, administration officials publicly assert the officer was under attack and fired in self-defense.

But while there have indeed been many instances of immigration agents assaulted or threatened while carrying out their often-dangerous duties, certain narratives pushed by senior leaders in the immediate wake of high-profile incidents have crumbled in the face of evidence that came out over time.

That’s why the recent incident involving Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old man shot and killed by an immigration officer in Houston on Tuesday, has garnered extreme scrutiny and skepticism over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s apparent rush to defend those involved.

And with little apparent evidence beyond the conflicting accounts of those who were at the scene, the incident has become the latest Rorschach test for how the general public interprets official claims made by an agency immediately following its use of force.

Scant evidence and competing narratives

Videos from the incident obtained by CNN show unmarked SUVs following Salgado Araujo’s van prior to the fatal shooting. Immigration agents involved in Trump’s nationwide sweep typically use roving fleets of unmarked vehicles, including rental cars.

It’s unclear from the videos whether the ICE vehicles were affixed with flashing emergency lights; with no audio, it’s impossible to determine whether the officers engaged sirens in their vehicles as they tried to pull him over.

The van appeared to stop, reverse and slowly drive on a sidewalk as officers displaying law enforcement insignias on their vests gave chase on foot.

To date, no video has surfaced depicting the moment of the shooting. But we know from DHS that an officer opened fire, and there were no accounts that anyone else did. We know from the medical examiner that Salgado Araujo died of a gunshot wound to the torso.

Hours after the incident, ICE issued a public statement saying its officers “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alien” and that Salgado Araujo attempted to evade them.

ICE said he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” later adding that an officer attempting to protect himself, his colleagues and any bystanders “discharged his weapon in self-defense.”

Notably, although ICE generally claimed its officers were engaged in a “targeted enforcement operation,” Salgado Araujo was not the target, a source familiar with the incident later told CNN.

A lawyer for two of the passengers who were in the van at the time of the shooting denied Salgado Araujo attempted to ram officers and disputed the officers were in danger, although there is, as yet, no further evidence to corroborate these claims.

Still, the agency’s latest swift defense of an officer while alleging criminal activity on the part of the person subjected to deadly force is the same model witnessed in other incidents, including the separate killings of activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers earlier this year in Minnesota.

In the case of Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, DHS officials quickly demonized her as a criminal who attempted to kill an immigration officer with her vehicle in an “act of domestic terrorism.”

However, video later obtained from the incident refuted that narrative – instead showing Good pulling away after being surrounded by officers who had ordered her to stop, with one officer at the front of the vehicle moving out of the way and appearing to fire on her from an angle as she drove off.

While federal officers are permitted to use deadly force to stop an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, the Department of Homeland Security also admonishes its officers to remain tactically sound, including avoiding “intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

In the case of Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, the initial narrative pushed by DHS and administration leaders — claiming he was a ‘domestic terrorist’ who brandished a firearm and was hellbent on slaughtering immigration officers — utterly collapsed within hours after numerous bystander videos surfaced.

In fact, multiple videos showed Pretti – a licensed gun owner who was armed while protesting immigration officers but never appeared to brandish, much less reach for, his pistol — tackled by officers and disarmed before one shot and killed him.

Unlike past incidents involving the questionable use of force, the fatal shooting of Salgado Araujo in Houston last week is notable due to the apparent lack of any bystander video that could corroborate or refute ICE’s version of events.

And despite constant cries from many circles for DHS to equip all of its officers with body cameras like countless police departments across the country, none of the officers involved in the Salgado Araujo incident was wearing one.

“Cameras are your friends. If you are conducting enforcement activities in the street, and there is a threat, the body-worn camera is going to pick that up,” US District Judge Sara Ellis told a Border Patrol official last year while examining the alleged aggressive tactics by immigration agents in Illinois.

In a politically-charged statement historically anathema to non-partisan national security agencies such as DHS, but now commonplace with the Trump administration, a DHS spokesperson last week blasted Democrats and the recent government shutdowns for allegedly delaying the department’s rollout of body worn cameras, but insisted they “have been deployed to more than half the field offices with the remaining half to receive them in the next 60 days.”

As with any investigation, all it may take to shed further light on what actually occurred just before an agent killed Salgado Araujo is the discovery of one new key piece of evidence — such as bystander or surveillance video — and ballistic analysis that could pinpoint where the officer was standing in relation to the van when he opened fire.

Until then, ICE’s initial version of events will largely be filtered by many through the lens of past rapid public statements that did not hold up under scrutiny.

Meanwhile, as the FBI and DHS Office of Inspector General review the shooting, local officials in Houston say federal investigators have shut them out of the ongoing investigation and are pleading for access to information.

“They have the evidence,” said Houston Mayor John Whitmire. “And in this instance, the van, the passengers, the deceased, and they’re tightly controlling it. We’ve reached out to them and asked them to share that information with (Houston police).”

Law enforcement veterans say that, particularly in high-profile use-of-force incidents, cooperation between federal and local officials is critical to conveying a sense of transparency.

“So much of this is about optics and public confidence,” said John Miller, CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst. “If federal officials determine there was no criminality on the part of the officers — setting aside whether the shooting was tactically sound — and they don’t have Houston investigators working hand in hand with them to make that determination, it’s going to look to some like they’ve circled the wagons.”