Prosecutor will take Houston ICE shooting case to grand jury
By Lomi Kriel, The Texas Tribune
August 28, 2026
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Friday that federal officials have not provided his office any information about the fatal shooting last month of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by immigration officers in Houston, so he plans to take the evidence his office has collected so far to a grand jury in the “next few weeks,” in part to compel the release of more details.
Teare said his office also may file a federal lawsuit to force the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to provide more information.
“We have now kind of put together as much physical evidence as we think we’re going to get and so the next step is to begin to get witnesses into the grand jury so that you get kind of a fuller picture of what eyewitnesses saw,” Teare said.
Although his office now knows the names of the four ICE agents who were pursuing the white van driven by Salgado Araujo early on July 7, Teare declined to identify them, citing grand jury proceedings that are typically secret until suspects have been indicted. Grand juries also have the power to subpoena agencies, including in the federal government, and conduct separate investigations. Teare said the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Texas Rangers and is conducting its own probe of the shooting, has received some information from DHS that it is sharing with his office to potentially take to the grand jury.
“A lot of our timing is going to be dependent on outside forces, on the cooperation we continue to get from the Texas Rangers, the cooperation we hope to get from DHS’s Office of Inspector General, the cooperation that we’re going to need from other individuals involved and so I really can’t put a true timetable on it,” he said, adding that the grand jury proceedings could ultimately result in a criminal indictment.
Teare, a veteran prosecutor, told the Tribune in the 25-minute interview that crucial aspects of ICE’s pursuit of Salgado’s van and his investigation of the shooting have contrasted sharply with other officer-involved shootings that the district attorney’s office has worked on in the past — even when they involved federal agencies.
The initial tip that set the fatal encounter into motion appeared to be incorrect. ICE agents said they were originally looking for at least one Guatemalan man with a prior deportation order who was also driving a white van in the same heavily Hispanic Houston neighborhood. Salgado and his three passengers — all construction workers on their way to a job that morning — were from Mexico and had no criminal record, their attorneys and families said.
In a new federal filing, ICE officers alleged that DPS provided the initial information about the targeted van.
ICE “had previously received Intel from DPS troopers” of two people in a white van with Texas plates and “sent identification for two subjects,” according to the document, which has since been sealed and is partially redacted. It was filed this week in federal court as part of a petition by attorneys to release one of the passengers from immigration detention.
According to that document, written by ICE officers in their official account of the shooting, neither of the people identified by DPS were the registered owners of the vehicle, so ICE officers conducted their own surveillance.
Weeks prior to the shooting, they had tried to stop the white van, but when its driver fled, officers did not pursue, according to the document. Then, on July 7, ICE officers “observed a white van matching the description” in the same area and pursued it.
A DPS spokesperson, Ericka Miller, wrote in an email that the information ICE agents included in their report was incorrect and that the state police did not provide any information to immigration officers “related to this incident.”
“DPS did not provide any information of any sort to ICE related to the location where the (officer involved shooting) occurred, any vehicles, other individuals or Mr. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo,” she wrote.
Spokespeople for DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to questions about the statements by Teare or DPS. They largely repeated what they’ve said publicly in the past, including that ICE agents were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” in the area when Salgado Araujo “”attempted to evade arrest.”
“From information we are receiving, he 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,” an unnamed ICE spokesperson wrote in an email.
Those claims have been refuted by the three passengers in Salgado Araujo’s vehicle, two of whom have been released from detention by federal judges who blocked the government from immediately deporting them.
Salgado Araujo’s fatal shooting is among at least three by DHS agents in Texas since Trump returned to office and adds to a growing tally nationwide, including at least two deaths of U.S. citizens in Minnesota. In most of those cases, including all the Texas incidents, DHS agents were not wearing body cameras.
The Minnesota shootings spurred nationwide protests about the harsh tactics of immigration agents there. Yet eight months later, state prosecutors have yet to indict any ICE agents in the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and only turned over key evidence to local prosecutors last month, illustrating the difficulty states can encounter when trying to prosecute federal officers.
In Houston, Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the front passenger seat and had the most complete view of the shooting, remains in custody. His attorney said this week that the Trump administration has indicated it is likely to finally approve his application for a temporary legal status because he is the witness to a potential crime. His sealed application to be released from custody has “seen movement” this week, attorney Ruby Powers said, but is pending a final decision.
The document released this week also said ICE officers used their emergency lights and sirens when trying to stop Salgado Araujo’s van, although that is not visible in footage of some parts of the pursuit that the Tribune reviewed. None of the ICE officers were wearing body cameras and the agency has maintained that dash cam footage from the two vehicles is not “available.”
Nothing about the ensuing pursuit, fatal shooting, crime scene and investigation has appeared to follow well established procedures, Teare said.
The district attorney’s office, for example, has a long-standing policy that mandates its investigators go to every fatal officer-involved shooting in Harris County. In this case, Teare said his investigators were not given access to the scene until a day later, making its independent investigation much more difficult.
By contrast, he said that the FBI immediately notified his office about the 2018 fatal shooting of a hostage and encouraged it to investigate the death, which eventually resulted in a grand jury declining to indict the federal agent. A federal judge last year found the agent was negligent when he fired the shots, ordering the government to pay about $2 million in damages to Ulises Valladares’ family.
The DA’s office also has not been provided what is called a field operations worksheet, detailing the ICE officers’ justification for stopping Salgado Araujo’s van, as well as ICE’s use of force and pursuit policy.
“This is so unique, having dealt with hundreds of agency officer-involved shootings in my career, to not have this stuff,” Teare said. “I mean, we’re almost through August. This happened July 7, so to not have this is just so out of the norm.”
ICE officers were in unmarked black SUVs and they did not use common emergency lights and sirens as they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo before boxing him in on a narrow residential street partially under construction, Teare said.
Most major state and local law enforcement agencies restrict officers in unmarked vehicles from making traffic stops, according to more than a dozen law enforcement experts who reviewed the available footage. Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina professor who focuses on use of force and is a former police officer, said the footage in this case “looks more like a carjacking attempt than it does a police stop.”
Teare echoed those concerns.
“One of the pursuing vehicles couldn’t even make the turn because they were so close,” he said. “It was a pursuit, and you’ve seen the footage. Their emergency equipment was not activated at that time at all.”
Both the chase and the fatal shots, which the vehicle’s passengers said came from an ICE agent on foot who fired through the right window, “wasn’t done the way that any law enforcement agency that I’ve ever worked with would teach their officers to behave,” Teare added.
“The traffic stop was not initiated correctly. The positioning of people is not the way that it’s taught, and so, no, nothing about that was done the way that any law enforcement agency that I’ve worked with would teach their people.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.