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mass deportation
‘He Did Not Deserve to Die’: Son of Man Killed by ICE Demands Independent Investigation
“We don’t expect the truth from the Department of Justice or from the FBI," said the president of a legal group advocating for the family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. "We expect a whitewash.”
Jul 09, 2026
The family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is demanding a full, independent investigation into his killing by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston earlier this week, as they and their lawyers warn that the government is being dishonest about the incident.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the agent shot Salgado, a 52-year-old construction worker from Mexico who has lived in the US for over three decades, in self-defense on Tuesday after he attempted to ram them with his vehicle while trying to evade arrest, though it has not provided evidence to corroborate this account.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Salgado's 29-year-old son, Ronaldo, a teacher in Houston, described coming to the harrowing realization that his father had been shot when he saw video of the incident as it circulated on social media.
"I recognized him immediately," Ronaldo said, beginning to tear up. "Not from his appearance, but from his voice crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out."
After hearing rumors that "something bad" had happened to his father, Ronaldo said it took hours for him to figure out what had happened—after going to the scene of the shooting, he found that nobody could give him any answers.
He did not find out where his father was until he approached Conchita Reyes, a representative from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), who contacted Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) and informed Ronaldo that his father was in the hospital.
"I learned of my father's passing from a news report on social media, not the hospital, not law enforcement," he said.
Ronaldo described his father as a "family man" who "dedicated his life in the United States to giving his family the American dream."
DHS described Lorenzo Salgado as an "illegal alien" who was living and working in the US without legal status. Ronaldo said he had lived in the US for 35 years, had no criminal record, and was in the process of obtaining a legal work permit when he was killed.
"We dotted every I, crossed every T, filled every document, attended every appointment," Ronaldo said. "He was close to obtaining his legal status."
He added that his father "worked the last 30 years of his life building homes in the Houston suburbs" and that "part of his dream was to build a house for himself and his family, just like the hundreds he had built for himself over his career."
"And he did, after he built his own house with his crew composed of family members and other loved ones," Ronaldo said. "You could find him every evening after work, resting on his porch, listening to music, petting his dog."
"I am deeply heartbroken to see that the man who taught me the value of hard work, family values, and education will no longer spend an evening on that porch," Ronaldo said.
Ronaldo said he was "calling for a full investigation into the events that transpired yesterday, July 7."
"He did not deserve to die," Ronaldo said. "He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father, and a job creator for dozens of men who also wanted the American dream."
Ronaldo noted that three other men, including his uncle, were also "rounded up" by ICE at the scene.
“I have not heard from them,” Ronaldo said, “but I hope that they are able to provide their own statements to prove that my father feared for his life as unmarked cars followed my dad, who only wanted to get back to work and back to us.”
Security cameras near the scene of the incident have captured some footage of Salgado’s white van appearing to be followed by unmarked ICE vehicles, but none captured the events leading up to the shooting, and there is no publicly available visual evidence of ICE’s claim that Salgado attacked officers.
The lawyers representing Salgado's family have called for DHS to release body camera footage of the incident. LULAC leaders called into question ICE's official account, noting that there had been no damage to Salgado's vehicle.
Ronaldo said his father has "always been aware of what to do in the event that he got pulled over" by ICE agents and that "he wasn’t supposed to give them a hard time.”
The legal team representing his family has said Salgado likely panicked when he saw he was being followed by masked men in unmarked cars and feared that criminals were attempting to steal his van and work equipment.
"One of his worst fears is that someone took away his work tools because that is how he made his livelihood," Ronaldo said.
So far, the federal government has not announced plans for a public, independent investigation into the agents involved in Salgado's shooting. The FBI has said it is investigating the alleged assault on the ICE agent, while the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is conducting an internal investigation.
DHS has not publicly released the name of the ICE agent who shot Salgado, citing what it said were rising threats to federal agents.
“We want a full and transparent investigation," said Juan Proaño, the CEO of LULAC. "Every piece of evidence, body camera footage, dash cam footage, bystander video, dispatch records must all be preserved and released to an independent investigator and to the public.”
In several cases over the past year, DHS and other law enforcement agencies under the Trump administration have claimed that people shot by ICE agents had attempted to harm them, only for video evidence to later prove those assertions to have been exaggerated or outright fabricated.
LULAC national president Domingo Garcia told The Texas Tribune, “We don’t expect the truth from the Department of Justice or from the FBI. We expect a whitewash.”
Garcia and other Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to DHS and ICE on Wednesday calling for an "immediate, fully independent, and transparent investigation" into Salgado's killing.
"This is not the first time ICE agents have used unnecessary, deadly force," she wrote, referencing the killings of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti during a surge of immigration agents to Minneapolis in January.
"ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in our community. His family deserves answers," she said in a public statement. "ICE cannot investigate itself."
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'Heartbreaking, Terrible Decision': Supreme Court Validates Trump Attack on TPS
"Hundreds of thousands of people who hold legal status... now face losing their ability to work and being torn from their families and homes."
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian residents from the US after stripping them of their Temporary Protected Status last year.
In a 6-3 decision, the high court's conservative majority ruled that the Department of Homeland Security was able to strip status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians—including many who'd lived in the US for years—after they'd been given protection because DHS deemed their home countries unsafe to return to.
"Hundreds of thousands of people who hold legal status, who registered with the government, passed background checks, and paid fees to do so, now face losing their ability to work and being torn from their families and homes," explained Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy group Fwd.US.
A federal judge temporarily delayed the administration’s TPS terminations in February, blocking what advocates feared would be a flood of immigration agents to areas with many TPS recipients. The judge said DHS had not followed the legally required steps to determine whether Haiti and Syria were safe enough for people with temporary status to return.
The State Department currently advises Americans not to visit either country for any reason, as Haiti is in the midst of a brutal gang war that has displaced more than 1.4 million people, and Syria has been in an ongoing state of unrest since the civil war began in 2011.
Echoing the lower court, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in her dissenting opinion that the only consultation within DHS on the conditions in these countries took place in a brief email exchange between a DHS aide and a State Department official, who said that there were no "foreign policy concerns" with terminating their status, but provided no evidence to declare that the two countries were safe.
The justice likewise noted that the stripping of status for Haitians was likely arbitrary and unconstitutional, based in part on "racial animus." She noted that President Donald Trump has made many statements about Haitians "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print."
Kagan listed several of them, including Trump's nonsensical rant that Haitians were "eating the pets" of residents in Springfield, Ohio; his claim that Haitians living in the US “probably have AIDS"; and his description of Haiti as a "shithole country." She also noted his comments about immigrants more broadly, including that they are "poisoning the blood" of the nation.
"The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country," Kagan wrote.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito sidestepped the question of whether DHS has properly considered the conditions in Haiti and Syria, stating that the TPS statute allows "no judicial review of any determination... with respect to the... termination” of a designation. He said that meant the court could not review either the final decision to terminate status or any of the individual decisions leading up to it.
He did acknowledge the question of racial animus and admitted that things Trump has said "would have scandalized the public just a short time ago." But, he said that “none of the cited statements" from Trump were "overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.”
The Trump administration has declined to renew TPS for all 13 countries for which it has come up for renewal during his second term. Alito said that since the administration has declined to renew TPS for every country, not just Haiti, the evidence was "insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
Thursday's ruling was yet another validation of Trump's efforts to end TPS by the Supreme Court, which last year ruled that he could similarly strip status from around 350,000 Venezuelan nationals.
But advocates have pointed out that the administration's case this time was substantially weaker.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it was "very important for people to understand that the Trump administration did not win a decision today saying that they had lawfully ended TPS."
"Instead," he said, "what the Supreme Court held was that even if the Trump administration had openly ignored the law in making TPS decisions, courts cannot stop them."
Nicolette Glazer, a California-based immigration attorney, said the court had basically determined that "a DHS secretary can end TPS at whim and neither statutory nor constitutional theory applies to curb administrative xenophobia."
"Make no mistake about what this is," said Amina Barhumi, the executive director of the Muslim Civic Coalition. "Temporary Protected Status exists because it is not safe to send people back to war and disaster. This decision does not change those dangers—it simply turns its back on the people fleeing them."
Schulte said it was a "heartbreaking, terrible decision that defies common sense." He added that "the administration simply broke the law in the way it terminated TPS." Now, he said, the lives of "hundreds of thousands of people who have lived here for decades... are in chaos."
While the Trump administration has often portrayed immigrants and refugees as parasites, Schulte argued that the "economic damage" of the decision would be felt far beyond the families facing deportation.
"Haitian TPS holders contribute nearly $6 billion to the US economy each year, and 200,000 of them work in industries already facing labor shortages, including healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing," he said. "An estimated 25,000 US citizen children of Haitian TPS holders will be pushed into poverty when their parents lose work authorization. Employers will lose trained, dedicated workers they cannot easily replace. The real-life impact of this ruling is profound, cruel, and heartbreaking."
Some members of Congress pledged to take action to defend TPS recipients in light of the decision.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, which would create pathways to permanent legal status for TPS holders, as well as holders of the similar Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), and those who were brought to the US unauthorized as children and received protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
"TPS holders followed the rules. They registered with the government, passed background checks, renewed their status, worked legally, paid taxes, and raised their families here," Garcia said. "Their reward should not be a deportation notice."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who spoke outside the court on Thursday, said the ruling showed that "the far-right MAGA majority on the court cannot stand." He said, "We need to win back the House and the Senate and expand the court."
"This is not over," Markey added. "It is our responsibility to protect TPS holders and provide this vulnerable group with a pathway to permanent citizenship. I will not stop fighting."
Even Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a strong supporter of Trump, said that while he "never disputed the ability" of Trump to end TPS, he "strongly disagree[d] with ending Haitian TPS at this time," saying that "the situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster and continues to warrant an extension."
Lawler noted that "roughly 1/3" of Haitian TPS holders "work in our healthcare system" and said "shutting off TPS will create a crisis" in hospitals, nursing homes, and for people with disabilities.
"I’m asking the administration to allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months," he said, adding that the Senate should consider his legislation with Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) to temporarily extend TPS protections.
He said the administration needed to "allow for a stable government to be established with a free and fair election, creating the conditions for a safe return for Haitians."
Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee, said the TPS ruling, and another ruling on Thursday allowing the administration to turn back asylum seekers at legal points of entry, "should alarm every American."
"The 14th Amendment promises due process and equal protection under the law. Those rights do not disappear because a president decides an entire community has become politically convenient to target," she said. "When the government can deny one group a hearing or strip away protections they have relied on for years, it is not just immigrants who lose. It sends a dangerous message that constitutional rights can be discarded whenever those in power find it politically useful."
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Petro Demands Release of Colombian Activist Held as 'Political Prisoner' by ICE
Marco Rubio's State Department is trying to deport activist Beto Coral over his public opposition to a far-right presidential candidate supported by Trump in Colombia's upcoming election.
Jun 20, 2026
Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Saturday demanded that US President Donald Trump “tell the people of Colombia” where activist Beto Coral is after he was detained by immigration agents this week following his criticism of Trump’s preferred candidate in Colombia’s presidential election.
Coral, a progressive activist and Petro supporter, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at his Phoenix home on Tuesday, immediately after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo claiming that Coral “has used his presence in the United States to conduct political activity in support of the Petro government.”
His family says they now have no idea where he is.
Atención: El activista colombiano @Betocoralg me llamó hace unos minutos para decirme que agentes de inmigración de @ICE lo están arrestando en este momento en Arizona, aparentemente con la intención de deportarlo. Está con su hijo que es menor de edad pic.twitter.com/sjlaGQdc4Y
— Daniel Coronell (@DCoronell) June 17, 2026
Coral is the son of Humberto Coral Caballero, a police captain who was involved in the 1993 operation that located and killed the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. His father was murdered just four months later, in a case that remains unsolved.
The younger Coral immigrated to the US in 2015 on a six-month tourist visa. He later applied for asylum in the US, saying he faced danger from drug cartels in Colombia.
Although the US Department of Homeland Security has also accused him of overstaying his visa for 10 years, the State Department memo pointed to his political activity.
“Allowing [Coral] to remain in the United States,” Rubio's memo said, “undermines US foreign policy interests in Colombia’s democratic processes and signals that foreign nationals may use US platforms to conduct politically motivated disinformation campaigns and litigation targeting foreign democratic actors without consequence.”
The memo reflects the State Department policy of seeking to deport foreign nationals explicitly over their expression of political viewpoints at odds with the Trump administration, particularly pro-Palestinian student activists such as Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University and Rümeysa Öztürk of Tufts University.
Rubio’s memo also noted that Coral had opposed the right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, a former criminal defense lawyer supported by Trump, who has pledged to “disembowel the left” if he takes power in Colombia’s presidential runoff on Sunday.
Petro has accused De la Espriella of being a “defender of narcoparamilitaries,” citing his legal defense of armed right-wing groups tied to massacres, assassinations, forced displacement, and drug trafficking.
In a message from detention, Coral said that his arrest "is a sign of what can happen" if De la Espriella, whom he described as a "defender of mobsters and criminals," becomes president of Colombia.
According to The New York Times, Coral’s arrest is the first known instance in which Rubio has targeted an immigrant in the US over their advocacy in a foreign election.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called it an example of "free speech under attack" by the Trump administration.
"Marco Rubio just had a man arrested and jailed, and is seeking to deport him, because he publicly criticized a presidential candidate in Colombia that Donald Trump would prefer to be elected," he said, adding that Coral "committed no crimes and had an asylum application pending."
Beto Coral fue nuevamente trasladado este día por las autoridades migratorias estadounidenses. Su familia asegura que desconoce su ubicación actual y advierte que su nombre ya no aparece en el sistema oficial ICE Locator, situación que ha incrementado la preocupación y la… pic.twitter.com/cNh4qYy0fI
— Beto Coral (@Betocoralg) June 19, 2026
The 40-year-old Coral was arrested after returning to his Phoenix home with his 12-year-old son. Coral had recently been in Miami, where he said he'd filed a lawsuit against De la Espriella, whom he'd previously accused of illegally recording phone calls between the two.
Coral's former partner, Tatiana Camacho, told the Times that De la Espriella had contacted Coral multiple times "so he would retract his statements.”
US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that Coral’s detention pointed to “coordination between American officials and Colombian political actors in this arrest—that would amount to our government aiding and abetting transnational repression.”
McGovern noted that he had helped lead legislation cosponsored by Rubio in 2023 to counter transnational political repression while Rubio was still a senator.
"Now he’s abetting it himself," McGovern said, "by weaponizing the law to punish free speech and help Trump’s right-wing buddies."
A Friday post from Coral’s X account stated that he had recently been transferred between facilities by immigration authorities, that his family does not know his current whereabouts, as his name no longer appears in the official ICE locator system.
Alberto Coral hijo del oficial de policía, capitán Humberto Coral Caballero, que fué asesinado en el operativo policial contra Pablo Escobar, es ahora, un preso político en EEUU.
Solo por el apoyo político que el secretario de estado de los EEUU Marcos Rubio dió al defensor de…
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) June 20, 2026
On Saturday, Petro said he “demands” that Trump “tell the people of Colombia where [Beto] Coral is,” referring to him in another post as a “political prisoner.”
“Solely because of the political support that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave to Abelardo de la Espriella, a defender of the genocidal narcoparamilitary forces against the Colombian people, who suggested his capture, he has been detained and beaten by the US government, separating him from his family,” Petro said. “[Beto] Coral sought asylum in the US because drug trafficking mafias could have murdered him 10 years ago, and the anti-migrant attitude toward South Americans has not even allowed for his authorization.”
“What will the members of Colombia’s Public Force—which carries out the world’s largest cocaine seizures—think if the states that benefit from them reject and torture even the sons of those fallen in combat against drug trafficking?” Petro asked.
He continued: “I request the solidarity of the governments of the world and the world’s human rights organizations to free the prisoner of conscience [Beto] Coral.”
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