Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare on Friday said federal investigators have not shared evidence with his office, including the name of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston earlier this month.
“My office has reached out to DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) on a number of occasions after this shooting, and not only have we not been told no, we haven’t gotten anything back. We haven’t gotten a response to anything,” Teare said, referring to the federal government agency that oversees ICE. “In the 20 years that I’ve been in law enforcement, I’ve never seen behavior like this.”
Teare, whose office has launched an investigation into Salgado Araujo’s July 7 death, made his comments at a congressional hearing in Houston organized by members of the U.S. House Hispanic caucus and Homeland Security Committee, including U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston.
Garcia asked the prosecutor if he knew the name of the ICE agent who shot Salgado Araujo.
“I can tell you definitively that DHS-OIG and ICE have not divulged the shooter’s identity to us,” Teare said, referring to the internal investigative unit of the U.S. Department Homeland Security.
The July 7 shooting has roiled many Hispanic residents in Houston and across the country, with advocates and other community members questioning ICE tactics and what they say is a lack of transparency from the Trump administration.
Teare also questioned the ICE tactics that led to the shooting and the FBI’s decision to immediately make public a search warrant that suggested there was methamphetamine in Salgado Araujo’s van.
The FBI said it is awaiting test results on the “crystal-like substance packaged in small plastic bags” that an FBI agent found in the van. Lawyers for the men who were in the van with Salgado Araujo have said they carried salt to mix with water as a homemade electrolyte drink when they worked construction in the Texas heat.
Teare said in his 20-year law enforcement career, he’s never seen a federal search warrant unsealed on the day it’s signed by a judge.
Lorenzo Salgado, Jr., one of Salgado Araujo’s three U.S. citizen sons, also spoke at the hearing, saying that his father didn’t use drugs.
“They’re saying there may have been drugs in the vehicle, which anyone who knew our father would tell you is absurd,” he said. “He did not use drugs; he abhorred them.”
He added that if his father knew he was being pursued by ICE agents he would have stopped the van because the family had planned for situations like this since ICE began pursuing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Salgado Araujo was in the middle of legalizing his immigration status after moving from Mexico to Texas 35 years ago, the family has said.
“I know my father would have stopped his vehicle immediately if ICE agents had clearly identified themselves,” he said. “Rather than aggressively approach him in two unmarked vehicles without emergency lights on. That must have been terrifying, not knowing who was after him.”
He also sent a message to the family of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Maine less than a week after Salgado Araujo was killed. ICE said after that shooting that Durán Guerrero was not the man agents were looking to arrest.
“We want your family to know that we share your grief,” Salgado Jr. said in Spanish. “No one should have to bury a father — a loved one — in this way.”
ICE had previously said agents stopped Salgado Araujo’s van as part of a targeted enforcement operation. Aaron Reitz, the new assistant attorney general for the Southern District of Texas, later said ICE agents were looking for two Guatemalan men in a different white van. Salgado Araujo and the other men in the van were Mexican citizens.
The FBI and DHS have declined to give any further information, citing an ongoing federal investigation. On Friday Teare said his office would not make public any details from its separate investigation. He also said he couldn’t provide a timeline for the investigation.
The sons gave emotional testimony about their father at the meeting and made a plea to the public to continue putting pressure on the Trump administration so that ICE is held accountable for Salgado Araujo’s death.
“On behalf of our family, thank you for hearing us today, and for the chance to make sure our father’s name is remembered for who he was — not as a headline, but as a husband, a father, a brother, a job creator, a man who believed good things come to those who work hard and who work tirelessly to give his sons more than he had,” said Rolando Salgado.
In addition to Garcia, the panel of lawmakers included Democratic House members Joaquin Castro of San Antonio and Lizzie Fletcher, Christian Menefee and Al Green of Houston. They were joined by lawmakers from Oregon, New Jersey and California.
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