Passengers in Houston ICE shooting say agents rammed their van before firing

By Uriel J. García, Lomi Kriel and Alex Nguyen, The Texas Tribune
July 21, 2026

Two passengers in a van when an immigration agent fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo earlier this month said that two unmarked vehicles struck them from behind and the side before they stopped, according to their written statements filed in a Houston federal court.

“At no moment were the agents in front of the vehicle,” Daniel Tirado Pantoja, a rear passenger in the van, said in his hand-written statement in Spanish. “Lorenzo (Salgado Araujo) had come to a full stop while the agents fired.”

Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego, who was also in the back seat, wrote in his statement that a patrol vehicle chased them, but Salgado Araujo believed he had lost the unmarked vehicles.

“Out of nowhere, they suddenly cornered us and we told Lorenzo (Salgado Araujo) to stop the van,” Rojas Pliego wrote. “When Lorenzo stopped the van, the officer shot him anyway.”

Shortly after the July 7 shooting in Houston’s heavily Latino east side, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokespeople said an agent fired in self-defense after Salgado Araujo attempted to hit the agent with his vehicle.

But Rojas Pliego said it was “impossible to say that they were going to get run over. That’s a lie — no officer was behind nor in front — they were on the sides.”

Excerpts of the men’s statements have been previously reported by The Washington Post. The full statements in Spanish, along with English translations, became public on Monday when they were attached as exhibits as part of petitions filed by Houston attorney Raed Gonzalez seeking the men’s release from an immigration detention facility in nearby Conroe.

Tirado Pantoja wrote in his statement that one of the ICE vehicles struck the van from behind before the same vehicle struck the van from the side. At some point, presumably after he was shot, Salgado Araujo yelled, “Ya me mataron” — they killed me.

Tirado Pantoja also said that another agent switched guns with the agent who fired his weapon. In his statement, he wrote that an agent fired multiple times.

Rojas Pliego wrote that after Salgado Araujo was shot, an agent violently pulled him out of the van and handcuffed his wrists and ankles on the ground before agents did the same to the three other men.

Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was the front passenger, wrote in his statement that an agent fired once from the passenger side of the van.

“When he shot my brother, the gun was in front of my face,” he wrote, according to attorney Hugo Balderas Ibarra’s account to The Washington Post. The brother’s written statement was not included in the most recent court filings.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge in Houston on Monday ordered DHS to not deport Rojas Pliego or transfer him to a detention facility outside the region without the court’s permission. A DHS spokesperson said on Tuesday that ICE will comply with the court order.

Tirado Pantoja’s petition was assigned to a different federal judge, who has not issued any directive on the case as of Tuesday afternoon.

The court filings also included passionate character reference letters from family members and an employer for the men, saying that they are kind and hardworking. Available public records and their own petitions say none had a criminal record and at least two of the four men, including Salgado Araujo, did not have prior deportation orders.

Ruby Powers, a Houston attorney representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, also filed a similar petition seeking his release, but asked a judge to keep it sealed because she fears the high-profile case could put him and his family in danger of “retaliation or intimidation.”

The shooting has renewed public criticism and scrutiny of the tactics ICE agents use to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation goals. Since his administration returned to office, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have decried ICE agents covering their faces and driving unmarked vehicles during deportation attempts.

The Trump administration has provided scant details about what led to ICE killing Salgado Araujo. In its initial statement, an unnamed ICE spokesperson said that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

Spokespeople for DHS, which oversees ICE, have repeatedly declined to answer detailed questions about Salgado Araujo’s killing. The agents involved were not wearing body cameras.

There were also no dashboard cameras, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, said Acting ICE Director David Venturella informed her.

But the Tribune, along with other media outlets, pieced together neighborhood surveillance footage and other witness cell phone videos that provide the only available look into the deadly pursuit so far. Fourteen policing experts who reviewed the footage agreed that among their many concerns about the stop was that ICE agents didn’t appear to use emergency lights and sirens.

Border czar unsure if agents used lights, sirens

In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the White House’s top immigration official, border czar Tom Homan, defended the agency’s use of unmarked vehicles that in the past two weeks have led to the deaths of both Salgado Araujo and a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant in Maine.

Homan said that all ICE vehicles should have emergency lights and sirens that they must employ when attempting to stop drivers.

“If they didn’t activate the lights, then there’s an issue there,” Homan said. “They should have been equipped with lights and sirens, but I do not know specifically if they activated those lights (in the two recent shootings).”

Homan also said that he wants body cameras for all ICE officers “as soon as possible” after none of the ICE agents involved in either two incidents were wearing them.

In a videotaped statement days after taking office last week, Aaron Reitz, the new Assistant Attorney General for the Southern District of Texas, offered additional details about the pursuit and shooting — some of them contradicted by the van’s passengers.

Reitz said federal officers were investigating two Guatemalan men who had previously evaded arrest and were driving a white van.

Reitz, whose office is one of several agencies investigating Salgado Araujo’s shooting, said he believed that “based on preliminary information” the ICE officers then spotted a “similar van in the area.”

He said the two ICE vehicles — a dark gray Jeep Grand Cherokee and a black Nissan Pathfinder — each with two agents inside, then turned on their emergency lights and tried to pull over the van “and the men that fit the suspects’ description.”

“The aliens then fled, conducting a rapid U-turn and hopping a median to get away,” he said.

The ICE agents didn’t pursue but later came across what Reitz suggested was the same van, although DHS did not independently corroborate this to the Tribune. Salgado Araujo and all of his passengers were Mexican citizens.

According to Reitz, once ICE encountered Salgado Araujo’s white van, the driver tried to flee and “this time the agents successfully surrounded the vehicle.” Two officers got out of their vehicles and instructed the men to put the van into park, he said.

This interaction is not visible in the available video footage, which largely does not contain audio. Three people in what appears to be plain clothes with bulletproof vests, presumably the ICE agents, can be seen running after the van as it slowly appears to roll to a stop.

“Preliminary information indicates the driver shifted the van into reverse, then forward again, while an officer was partially inside the van or immediately next to it,” Reitz alleged.

This is also not visible on available video and is contradicted by the accounts of the passengers in Salgado Araujo’s van.

Experts who reviewed the available footage, as well as photographs of the van before and after the pursuit, said that the damage to the driver’s side of the vehicle suggests that it was ICE agents who caused that scrape.

The placing of Salgado Araujo’s fatal wound, to the lower right of his abdomen, additionally indicates that officers fired through the front right passenger window, which experts said indicates the shooting agents were not in harm’s way.

The FBI later sought a search warrant to test plastic bags containing a white substance visible inside the van. Although FBI testing has been ongoing since Thursday, a lawyer for Salgado Araujo’s brother said that substance was actually salt that the men mixed with water as a way to prevent dehydration from working in the Texas heat.

Praised by families, employer

Letters from family members and an employer filed in court describe the van’s passengers as kind and hardworking men who have done nothing wrong.

In a statement, Eric Portillo said he has known Tirado Pantoja for years through his construction work and praised his integrity and dedication.

“He has earned the trust and respect of everyone who has worked for him, not only because of his craftsmanship, but because of the kind person he is,” Portillo wrote. “Daniel is a devoted family man who has spent years working to provide for those he loves. His detention has been heartbreaking for his family and for those of us who know him personally.”

Monserrat Cardoso, who said Tirado Pantoja has played a fatherly role in her life since starting to date her mother in 2014, said she and her family have been “devastated” by the situation.

Apolonia Martinez identified Rojas Pliego as her partner since 2016, describing him in a statement as a “loving person” who has taken good care of her during an illness.

Griselda Silva, his stepdaughter, called him “one of the nicest sweetest kind hearted [people] there is. He is the type of person who will help other[s] in need, just like he has help[ed] my children and I when we most needed it.”

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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.