The shot that killed a man during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation last week in Houston was fired into the front passenger side window, according to a local congresswoman and a lawyer who spoke with witnesses who were in the vehicle.
The precise moment of the shooting of the man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, remains unclear in video evidence obtained by The New York Times. But witnesses gave firsthand accounts to Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat who represents part of the Houston area, and Ruby Powers, a lawyer representing the victim’s younger brother, who was the front-seat passenger.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving to work at a construction site with his brother, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, and two other passengers when ICE agents began tailing them.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo and Daniel Tirado Pantoja, a fellow construction worker, spoke at length this weekend to Ms. Garcia at a detention center about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s last moments, on Canal Street in Houston. Ms. Powers spoke with her client, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo.
The ICE agents did not identify themselves as they approached the van shortly before 7 a.m. on Tuesday after it slowed on Canal Street, Ms. Garcia said.
It is unclear from available video whether ICE agents identified themselves.
The Times obtained footage from earlier in the pursuit — roughly 2.5 miles north of Canal — where the ICE vehicles had flashing emergency lights on. But footage from Canal Street shows no emergency lights were activated during this portion of the events.
Ms. Garcia said, according to her conversations with both men, that after the van came to its final stop, an agent fired a single shot through the lowered front passenger window, striking Mr. Salgado Araujo.
Mr. Salgado Araujo then got out of the van before agents pulled him to the ground, Ms. Garcia added. He died shortly after.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo gave his account of this moment to Ms. Powers, his lawyer. He told her that he heard a man on foot yell “Stop!” as he approached the front passenger door of the van on Canal Street. Then the man fired a single shot through the front passenger window, Ms. Powers said.
After Mr. Salgado Araujo was struck, his brother described seeing him in pain and clutching his back, Ms. Powers said.
The brother emphasized, Ms. Powers said, that the men inside the van did not know that law enforcement officials were chasing them.
Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo told Ms. Powers that the van contained only tools and work items. “A cooler, and water and Gatorade,” she said.
All three passengers are undocumented Mexican nationals who had been living in the United States for decades, according to Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, a lawyer for two of them.
The agents had been searching for two other people, including a Guatemalan man they believed was inside the van, when they began trailing Mr. Salgado Araujo, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not permitted to speak about the case. Neither target was in the van. ICE has said that the agents and vehicles involved were not equipped with cameras.
The shooting is one of a growing number of encounters in which immigration agents have fired at civilians during enforcement operations. More than 20 people have been shot at since September, nearly all while inside vehicles, and several have been killed. On Monday, an ICE agent shot a man dead in Biddeford, Maine.
In the Houston encounter, it is difficult to say whether the available video footage from Canal Street, which is low resolution and shows only a partial, obstructed view of the interactions, captured when the fatal shot was fired.
A video filmed by a camera at a nearby gas station shows the moment the van comes to a final and complete stop. One of the side doors opens, and movement is visible on the passenger side of the van. It’s unclear if the source of movement is an agent, someone in the vehicle or both.
Seconds later, the footage shows one agent next to the front passenger side door moving his right arm toward his hip.
The agent then steps toward the van, pointing an object in his right hand in the direction of the vehicle. It is unclear what this object is, or whether it is a weapon. There is also no visible indication of any firing or discharge, but the view is obscured by a telephone pole and passing vehicles.
With legs spread apart, the agent appears to lower his right hand back to his hip as he pulls open the front passenger side door with his left hand. He appears to struggle for several seconds to return the object to his hip.
ICE said in a statement on Monday that agents had tried to pull over Mr. Salgado Araujo’s vehicle as part of a “targeted enforcement operation” and that an agent fired in “self-defense” after Mr. Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle.”
Last week, the agency said that Mr. Salgado Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle, had not followed orders and had tried to run over an officer, but it has presented no evidence to back up its claims.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it was investigating the shooting, and that the F.B.I.’s Houston office is “leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
Ms. Garcia said the accounts of ICE and the two detained witnesses with whom she spoke are “almost like a different event.”
“They both said — and I visited with them independently — that none of them in any way touched, struck or contemplated even approaching the officers because they were inside the car,” she added.
The third witness in the van, José Trinidad Rojas, declined to speak to the congresswoman, but Mr. Balderas-Ibarra, the lawyer representing him and Mr. Pantoja, said that what Ms. Garcia had heard was consistent with what his clients had told him.
Dmitriy Khavin contributed video production.
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