A 52-year-old man kissed his dog goodbye, packed the meal his wife made him, picked up three coworkers, and drove to a construction site. ICE shot him dead before he got there. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is now the tenth person fatally shot by federal immigration officials since Donald Trump's second term began, and the administration's explanation for killing him is already falling apart.
Ten People Dead. One Pattern.
According to a review of public reports by the Guardian, ICE officers and Customs and Border Protection agents have now killed ten people in shooting incidents since January 2025. Ten. In roughly eighteen months. The administration would like you to believe each one was a tragic but justified use of force. The evidence keeps suggesting otherwise.
Salgado's death happened during what DHS called a 'targeted enforcement operation' in the early morning hours of Tuesday. Officers stopped the van he was driving. Something went wrong, or something was done wrong, and Salgado was shot and killed. The three other men in the vehicle were arrested. His family had no warning, no explanation, and now no husband, no father.
The Department of Homeland Security claims Salgado 'weaponized' his vehicle against ICE officers. That is a specific word choice, and it is not an accident. You've heard it before. You'll hear it again.
The 'Weaponized Vehicle' Playbook
DHS used the exact same language about Renee Good, a US citizen shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minnesota in January. Good 'weaponized' her vehicle, they said. Then footage came out. The footage told a different story. The administration's version quietly stopped being the official version.
The Guardian also reports that 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez, another US citizen, was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a traffic incident in March 2025. Officials said he 'intentionally' ran over a federal agent. Video released later, as congressional representatives Robert Garcia and Greg Casar put it, revealed 'a troubling pattern in which official statements about the use of lethal force are later challenged by video footage, witness testimony, or subsequent investigations.' That is a very diplomatic way to say they keep lying.
In at least four of the ten shooting deaths, including Salgado's, the victims were in moving vehicles when they were shot. The Guardian notes that law enforcement officers are specifically trained to move out of a vehicle's path rather than discharge their weapons at it. And yet here we are. The Wall Street Journal identified over a dozen incidents of federal immigration officials firing at people in vehicles between July 2025 and January 2026 alone.
At some point, 'isolated incident' stops being a credible label.
The Deaths Don't Stop at the Shooting Range
The killings in the street are one part of this. The deaths in custody are another. Last month, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights released a report calculating that 52 people have died in ICE detention in the first 500 days of Trump's second administration. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has raised alarm about the rising death toll in US immigration custody. Twenty-one people have died in ICE detention this year alone, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Jesse Franzblau, the associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, put it plainly to the Guardian: 'The deaths of people in immigration prisons has reached new terrifying levels.' He also pointed out that Congress handed ICE and CBP $70 billion in a bill passed just last month, with, as he described it, 'no accountability for the violence they have brought to our communities.' Seventy billion dollars. Zero meaningful oversight. Fantastic deal, if you're the one doing the shooting.
Who's Supposed to Investigate? Not the People Doing the Shooting.
Salgado's family, elected officials, and civil rights groups are all calling for an independent investigation. Congressman Sylvia Garcia has demanded one. Texas state representative James Talarico, currently running for US Senate, called for a 'full, independent investigation.' The Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney, Steve Descano, told the Guardian plainly: 'The Trump administration has made it clear that this is a duty they have no interest in fulfilling.'
Descano co-founded Fight Against Federal Overreach, a coalition of district attorneys trying to hold federal officials accountable from the state and local level, because the federal level has checked out entirely. He framed what's happening as a 'moral abdication' that forces local prosecutors to pursue what the federal government refuses to. That is a staggering thing to have to say about your own government. It is also completely accurate.
Salgado's son, Ronaldo, stood at a press conference and said of his father: 'He did not deserve to die.' That's the whole thing, really. That's the whole article. A 52-year-old man was on his way to build houses. He did not deserve to die.
Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Ruben Martinez, Lorenzo Salgado
These are not statistics. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were US citizens, killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January. Their deaths triggered mass protests. Ruben Ray Martinez was 23 years old, a US citizen, shot by ICE during a traffic stop, with the agency's role in his death hidden for nearly a year before congressional Democrats forced it into the open. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was a 52-year-old construction worker who built the house he lived in, who said goodbye to his dog on Tuesday morning and never came home.
The Guardian's count is ten shooting deaths in eighteen months. The administration has offered a consistent explanation for each one and has been contradicted by evidence a remarkable number of times. The pattern is not complicated. The pattern is actually very simple.
The Dingo Take
Here is what this administration has built: an enforcement apparatus with billions of dollars, military-grade authority, and an institutional reflex to lie first and release the video only when forced to. ICE and CBP are shooting people in the street, people are dying in their facilities at rates that alarm the United Nations, and the response from the top is to pass a $70 billion funding bill with no strings attached and keep using the word 'weaponized' until it loses all meaning. This is not a system with occasional accountability failures. This is a system operating exactly as the people running it intend.
The 'weaponized vehicle' defense is doing a lot of work here, and it is starting to buckle under the weight. It failed the factual test with Renee Good. It failed it with Ruben Ray Martinez. It will be tested again with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Salgado's family deserves to know the truth about how he died. The problem is that the entity best positioned to investigate is the same entity doing the killing, and the administration has made absolutely clear it has no interest in that exercise.
Ten people shot dead by federal immigration officials in eighteen months. Fifty-two people dead in ICE detention in five hundred days. A $70 billion blank check. And a government that calls it enforcement. At some point the rest of the country has to decide what it's going to call it.
