In less than one week, ICE agents shot and killed two men who were not the targets of their operations. One was a 52-year-old builder who had lived in the United States for 35 years and was close to legal status. The other was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was legally authorized to work in this country and had a Social Security number. Both are dead anyway.
What Happened in Houston
On July 7, according to the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents in unmarked vehicles were running a targeted enforcement operation in Houston when they spotted a white van they thought might be connected to their actual target. The Guardian reports that officers "initiated a vehicle stop" on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican-born builder who was driving his crew to a job site that morning.
Salgado Araujo was not the person they were looking for. DHS acknowledges this. He had no criminal history. He had spent over three decades building a life in the United States, and his family says he was close to obtaining legal status. None of that saved him.
DHS claimed Salgado Araujo "weaponized his vehicle" in an attempt to run over an ICE agent. The three surviving men in the van told their attorney a completely different story: there was never any ICE agent standing in front of the vehicle, and the shots came from the sides. Witnesses on the scene disputed the agency's account. There are no publicly available dashcam or bodycam recordings to settle the question, because of course there aren't.
What Happened in Maine
Less than a week later, on July 14, ICE agents in Maine shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, a Colombian man. DHS says agents were conducting surveillance on an address associated with someone who had a final removal order. A vehicle left the property. Agents tried to stop it.
The office of Senator Angus King confirmed to WMTV-8 that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin personally told the Maine senator that Durán Guerrero was not the target of the operation. Not the target. Shot anyway.
DHS says the vehicle "attempted to flee the scene" and an agent fired out of concern for public safety. Witnesses told media a different story: that after the shooting, Durán Guerrero told agents he had tried to stop the car as they dragged him out of it. His wife and young daughter witnessed the aftermath. The daughter was wearing Bluey pajamas. She is going to remember that morning for the rest of her life.
Eleven Dead Since January
The Guardian has reviewed public reports and confirmed that the killing of Durán Guerrero was the 11th fatal shooting by federal immigration officials since Trump's second term began. Eleven people. That includes the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. These are not abstract statistics. These are individual human beings who are dead.
After the killings, The Guardian reported that federal immigration officials were quietly instructed to stop pulling over vehicles until further notice. Border czar Tom Homan went on Fox News to call it a "temporary pause" while officials assess recent incidents and consider whether additional training is needed. Training. That's what they landed on. As if the problem is that the agents doing this need a few more classroom hours.
The Pushback Is Getting Louder
Civil rights organizations are not using the word "incident" anymore. Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said in a statement that bystander video of the Maine shooting "make it clear that ICE agents carried out another extrajudicial public execution." She called on Congress to freeze ICE funding and limit the agency's jurisdiction. "The only way to prevent ICE from killing us in the streets," she said, "is to remove ICE from the streets."
Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights was equally direct, calling the killings "state violence with the direct intent of terrorizing communities through fear, intimidation, and deadly violence." America's Voice, a progressive immigration reform group, pointed out that a temporary vehicle-stop pause does nothing to fix the actual problem, which they described as "a hastily hired, undertrained force of armed agents operating under exorbitant, politically driven arrest quotas."
DHS, for its part, released a statement saying it would not "disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics." What it will do, apparently, is keep sending agents out in unmarked vehicles to stop people who look like they might be who they're looking for, and deal with the consequences later.
Nobody is Being Held Accountable
Elected officials and civil rights groups are demanding independent investigations into both killings. That's the right call. Whether it happens is another question entirely, given that the administration's posture toward accountability for its own agents has been consistent: don't ask, don't tell, don't apologize.
The DHS statement essentially closed the door on transparency: "We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics." Eleven people are dead. The agency's response is to call it tactics.
The Dingo Take
Here is a very simple fact that is somehow not the lead story on every television broadcast in America right now: the federal government has killed eleven people during immigration enforcement operations since January, and at least two of those people were not even the targets of the operations that killed them. A 52-year-old construction worker driving to a job site. A 26-year-old man with a Social Security number and legal work authorization. Both dead. No criminal history. No removal orders. Just in the wrong vehicle at the wrong moment when armed agents in unmarked cars decided they looked close enough.
The "temporary pause" on vehicle stops is not a policy response. It is the government equivalent of putting a dish towel over a grease fire. Tom Homan going on Fox News to call this a training issue is genuinely insulting. You don't train your way out of a system that incentivizes mass arrests on political deadlines, deploys agents without adequate oversight, and then circles the wagons when those agents kill the wrong person. That is not a training failure. That is the system working exactly as designed and producing predictable results.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo spent 35 years in this country. He was almost legal. He was driving his crew to work. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero's daughter was in Bluey pajamas when she saw what happened to her father. These are not acceptable losses in a functioning democracy. They are not acceptable at all. But right now, the people responsible for stopping this are either cheering it on or issuing statements about how they're looking into it, which in Washington means exactly nothing.
