Three men who witnessed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s killing by federal immigration officers in Houston disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account and said the victim never tried to run over a federal agent.
The men, who were inside the vehicle, were arrested during the Tuesday encounter and spoke from immigration detention with their lawyer, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra. They said that Mr. Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant who was driving to work at a construction site, did not use his vehicle as a weapon or attempt to run over the immigration officers who opened fire, according to the lawyer.
Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped the vehicle around 6:50 a.m. and tried to arrest the driver, according to the acting director of ICE, David Venturella, who released a statement soon after the shooting.
He said that Mr. Araujo had tried to run down an officer before he was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital, where he died.
No evidence was provided to support that account.
“After speaking with these three men that were in the vehicle with Lorenzo, I have no doubt that what they are saying is the truth,” Mr. Balderas-Ibarra said during a Friday news conference. “All three reiterated that at no point was an agent standing in front of the vehicle nor was an agent placed in the line of danger.”
The account of the witnesses was first reported by The Washington Post.
In recent months, video evidence has disproved several federal law enforcement accounts of shootings by immigration agents.
In the Houston killing, surveillance and witness videos obtained by The New York Times show two ICE vehicles tailing the white van and trying to cut it off. The van can be seen doing a U-turn before stopping alongside the road, with several immigration agents running toward the van as it comes to a halt. Video of the moments when shots were fired has not emerged.
A video filmed shortly after the shooting shows immigration agents hovering over a man bleeding and holding his abdomen. More images show another man on the ground, his hands behind his back.
The ICE agents were not wearing body cameras, and none of the vehicles had dashboard cameras that captured the shooting, according to Representative Sylvia Garcia, Democrat of Houston, who said she had spoken to Mr. Venturella. Ms. Garcia said that Mr. Venturella had promised to get body cameras for ICE agents in the Houston area by the end of this month.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office is leading an investigation into the shooting. The F.B.I.’s Houston office is also looking into the case, primarily as an assault on a federal officer.
Mr. Araujo’s family has called for an independent investigation into his death, which was ruled a homicide by the Harris County Medical Examiner.
Ms. Garcia, who spoke to reporters during the news conference, said that Mr. Venturella had assured her that the witnesses in detention would not be deported as the investigations continue.
The agents had been searching for a different undocumented immigrant when they killed Mr. Araujo, who has lived in the United States without authorization for 35 years. He was a husband, father of three children and a business owner. According to his sons, he was in the process of obtaining a work permit.
“He wanted nothing else in life but to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people,” his son Ronaldo Salgado said at a Wednesday news briefing. “That’s how I want the world to know my father: not as someone who got shot and killed, but as a family man, a man who understood that good things come to those who put in hard work.”
ICE officers have ramped up arrests across the United States since late last month, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. In five days at the end of June, ICE officers arrested more than 10,000 people, the documents show. After a brief lull during the holiday weekend, arrests picked back up by Tuesday, the day Mr. Araujo was shot. From Tuesday through Thursday, ICE officers arrested more than 6,000 people, internal records show, a pace of about 2,000 arrests a day.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
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