Houston ICE shooting strains already tense relations between U.S., Mexico

By Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune
July 13, 2026

McALLEN — Last week’s killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was the latest test of an already strained relationship between the two nations that share a border in Texas.

On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her government will file complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice and with prosecutors in states where 17 Mexican people had died in a federal detention center or during immigration enforcement in the U.S.

Sheinbaum also said the Mexican government will file civil lawsuits against companies that operate immigrant detention centers — fulfilling a promise made shortly after Salgado Araujo was shot to death in Houston to seek justice for what she called human rights violations against Mexicans living in the U.S.

“This is probably one of the toughest moments in the relationship since 1985,” said Tony Payan, executive director of the Claudio X. Gonzalez Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Sheinbaum called on Mexico’s political parties to unite in support of Mexicans living in the U.S. and urged officials to submit inquiries and statements condemning human rights violations of Mexicans.

“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” she said. “This is an issue for all Mexicans.

Sheinbaum said Mexican Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco notified the U.S. ambassador to Mexico of the plan to file the complaints.

“He appeared receptive to our concerns,” she said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond directly to complaints by the Mexican government but said there had been no spike in deaths, maintaining a rate of 0.008% among their detained population as of May 29.

The agency added that detainees receive a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens and that all detainees receive due process, proper meals, water and medical treatment. Attorneys and family members of detainees have disputed that claim.

The action by the Mexican government comes at a time when the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is in the worst state that it has been in decades, experts say.

Turning to the U.S. legal system is nothing new for the Mexican government. Seeking to hold U.S. companies accountable for the proliferation of U.S. weapons into Mexico, the country in 2021 filed a $10 billion lawsuit against gun manufacturers that was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court

In 2022, Mexico sued gun dealers for allegedly supplying military-style weapons and ammunition to Mexican drug cartels. The case is ongoing.

In the past, Republican and Democratic administrations have seen these cases as annoyances, or frustrations, but the overall relationship between the countries was not impacted, said Eric L. Olson, former associate director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“I think it would be fair to say that the stakes are a little more elevating in this case,” he said.

The last time Payan recalls U.S.-Mexico relations being similarly strained was in 1985 after the death of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar, who was killed by Mexican cartel members.

The incident prompted the DEA to launch a manhunt in Mexico, the agency’s largest homicide investigation, and President Ronald Reagan partially closed the border for a few days.

The relationship between the U.S. and Mexico began to sour over immigration and trade during President Donald Trump’s first term, but relations have worsened during his second term as Trump designated major drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and Mexican officials were indicted for allegedly conspiring with drug traffickers, said Carlos Heredia, professor of international studies at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

The Tribune reached out to the U.S. State Department after hours and did not receive an immediate response.

Adding fuel to the fire is a breakdown in trade negotiations.

The U.S. opted to not renew the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement for another 16 years, leaving the agreement in effect but subject to annual review until 2036.The parties could continue to negotiate its renewal without a clear timeline or choose to terminate it.

If the U.S. walks away from the agreement, as Trump has threatened, that would put Mexico in a tough spot because it’s heavily dependent on access to U.S. markets, Payan said.

That places every aspect of the U.S.-Mexico relationship back on the table, he said.

“Every aspect of the bilateral negotiation is now under threat,” said Heredia, who argued that it was important that Mexico take action in the aftermath of the deaths in U.S. custody or by federal agents.

“In the same fashion that the United States says that [a Mexican official] is a threat to the national security of the United States, we can rightfully say that ICE is a threat to the security of Mexicans because of the racial profiling,” he said.

Payan doesn’t think the complaints filed by the Mexican government will risk anything because pursuing justice through the court system is a slow process.

“It doesn’t add any heat to an already hot relationship,” Payan said.

Olson disagreed, arguing that the Trump administration has a propensity to take offense on issues and letting that bleed into unrelated matters.

“I think the risks are higher,” he said.

Going forward, Olson expects issues that would not normally cause a rift between the two countries to become more irritating and carry more weight because both sides are pointing fingers instead of viewing each other as partners on issues.

“I think as long as that’s the kind of mindset on both sides, then I think you can expect more and more irritants to pop up — more problems, more conflicts,” he said.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

Disclosure: Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc. and Rice University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.