ICE lowered its standards to build its ranks—and now blood has been spilled because of it.
Emily Singer at Daily Kos:
When the Trump administration announced it was lowering hiring standards and shortening the length of training for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers so that the agency could have more warm bodies to aid in President Donald Trump’s racist mass deportation efforts, experts warned that the changes could have deadly consequences.
Sadly, those experts’ warnings are proving to be correct.
The Associated Press on Thursday night reported that close relatives to David Brouillette—the ICE agent who shot and killed a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant in Maine—describe him as a violent and mentally unstable man who should never have been given access to a gun or power.
According to the report, family members accused Brouillette “of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.”
Brouillette’s ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told the AP that he had been violent toward her, including one incident in which he threw boiling water at her while holding the couple’s daughter. She added that when he told her he was hired by ICE, she didn’t believe him because he had a history of psychiatric issues and she thought he was experiencing a mental health crisis.
Brouillette’s reported violent history could easily have been found if ICE had done a comprehensive background check.
According to the AP, Brouillette’s violent conduct was detailed in “hundreds of family court records,” which accused Brouillette of stalking, harassment, and physical and verbal abuse. Another relative told AP that Brouillette had been also diagnosed with “severe bipolar disorder,” had been hospitalized multiple times, and twice attempted suicide.
What’s more, Ashley Brouillette told the Portland Press Herald that she had personally warned her ex-husband’s previous superiors in the military of his issues, yet he had remained on the job.
But ICE was so desperate to deport people of color that they hired a man like Brouillette, who, according to both the AP and Portland Press Herald, admitted to his ex-wife and daughter that he was the officer who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the Colombian immigrant who was legally in the United States. Reportedly, he even asked them to lie about what happened.
David Brouillette, the ICE goon who killed Joan Sebastián Guerrero, has a long history of violence, especially towards women.
See Also:
AP, via HuffPost: ICE Officer In Maine Shooting Has History Of Violent Behavior, Family And Records Say
DHS officials cite mistaken identity in latest death at the hands of ICE agents.
Alix Breeden at Daily Kos:
When Lorenzo Salgado Araujo arrived at a Houston hospital after being shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Tuesday, he was admitted as a John Doe.
The federal agents may not have known his name when they set out to the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood to apprehend immigrants that day, but they were extremely aware of who Salgado was as they stripped him of any form of identification and his belongings after shooting him. That move kept his family from claiming his body, according to news reports.
“That is Soviet gestapo tactics when you want to hide a crime or victim,” Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in a conversation with Daily Kos. The organization is supporting the Salgado family in their quest for answers.
The details around this latest ICE shooting are murky at best.
When news first broke that the 52-year-old Mexican national was shot, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE agents were en route to detain a different man who drove a similar vehicle as Salgado. Officials also claimed that Salgado tried to ram an officer with his vehicle, although they have offered no evidence to prove it.
It’s unclear who the actual target was—or why ICE agents zeroed in on Salgado as the veteran builder drove employees to a construction site that morning.
“There are thousands of those trucks around Texas,” Proaño told us.
What’s clear is that this case of mistaken identity had tragic consequences.
“There were two men—one in the driver’s seat and one in the passenger seat—that were of brown complexion and of Latin descent. This is very clearly a case of racial profiling, very clearly a case of civil rights violation and due process violations, and excessive enforcement on behalf of ICE and its agency,” Proaño said. “It’s very clear that they have not changed their tactics since [Kristi] Noem and [Greg] Bovino were in charge.”
[...]
The Salgado family knew the risks of being Latin American in the U.S. under the Trump administration.
“The family had a protocol in place should there be an encounter with ICE,” Proaño told Daily Kos. Salgado, who had lived and worked in the U.S. for 35 years, was “weeks or possibly months away” from obtaining his citizenship.
As they anxiously awaited that day, Proaño said, the family—including Salgado’s three U.S.-born children—was told to “not overreact” and to call a family member and the family lawyer if they were detained by ICE.
“And they knew that even if he was detained, they could always get him back. But the escalation here clearly got to a point where the families now had to suffer a terrible loss, a family that never wanted this national attention,” Proaño said.
Now the Salgado family, with the help of LULAC, is reluctantly in the spotlight seeking what justice there is left to claim.
And DHS, in a similar response to the shootings of Pretti and Good, has continued to deflect responsibility.
[...]
As it stands, LULAC and other community advocates are demanding an independent investigation. So far, LULAC has obtained over 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for just that. Similarly, the organization has pushed a GoFundMe to help foot the family’s legal and household bills.
“They’ve lost a husband, a father, a provider, a protector,” Proaño said. “Something that no one would ever expect on a normal, routine day for Lorenzo and for his family.”
Salgado’s death prompted Mexican government officials to announce that Mexico will file criminal complaints in the United States on behalf of 14 of its citizens who have died while in custody at U.S. detention centers.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday said it’s time to “go further than diplomatic notes.”
ICE’s coverup of its killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is the duplicitous play they pulled in the aftermaths of the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was picking up a crew for a construction project when ICE shot him. It now claims he was the aggressor.
Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark:
LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO CAME TO THE UNITED STATES thirty-five years ago—a few years too late to benefit from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, popularly known as the “Reagan amnesty.” He worked in construction. By the 2000s, he was a small business owner who provided jobs and work for other men. They would drive to the North Houston suburbs and build houses. His dream was to build his own home for his family one day—a dream he achieved.
On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo was picking up workers as usual shortly after 6 a.m. when he was confronted by ICE and killed. He was 52 years old.
The shooting in Houston’s historically Mexican-American East End community near Magnolia Park took place just five minutes from the site of Houston’s FIFA Fan Festival.
Lorenzo’s son Ronaldo Salgado, a teacher, wrote on Facebook Tuesday night that his father had been in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process.
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning, Ronaldo thanked his former students for being in attendance and Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) for spending time in the hospital with him overnight.
He said Lorenzo had been a hardworking man of routine, one who never cared for his name to be known outside his family, only for his children—three sons, all born in the United States—to be educated and to become good people.
“I love our dad, he worked hard,” Ronaldo told me in an interview after the press conference. “He always told us that we needed to do well in school so we don’t end up like him in the sun.”
On Tuesday, Lorenzo’s day began at 5 a.m., the same way it did every day: “with a hearty meal prepared by my mom,” Ronaldo said.
But after taking his coffee and loading his work boots in the car to pick up his crew for work on houses in North Houston, Lorenzo was beset by ICE agents in unmarked cars. Some sort of confrontation ensued. He was shot. He died of his injuries at a hospital.
As Ronaldo wrote this morning, “Today is the first day without him for all of us, and it is heartbreaking to know that my mom did not make lunch for my dad before going to work—the first time in their 30+ year marriage.”
In the emotional press conference, Ronaldo described his desperate scramble to find out information about what happened to his father. When he first heard about an interaction with ICE, the reports were conflicting. He hoped his father had simply been detained, so his first plan had been to find his father’s white work van and deliver it to his crew so that they might be able to finish work and get paid.
As time went on, Ronaldo remained in the dark. He did not learn about his father’s final moments from a hospital or law enforcement. Instead, confirmation of his death came in the cruel form of videos on social media.
“I recognized him immediately: not from his appearance, but from his voice crying in the street as he was bleeding out,” Ronaldo said through tears.
[...]
“Me estan matando”
ICE HAS PORTRAYED LORENZO in its statements to the media as an “illegal alien” who acted violently in the confrontation.
“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 ICE spokesperson said.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve all heard it before. As Lorenzo’s family, activists, and Democratic officeholders have all pointed out, ICE’s response after this shooting has been the same as its response to each ICE-related killing during Trump 2.0: to claim its personnel acted responsibly, and not to wait for an investigation before casting blame on the dead. The New York Times found that Trump administration claims about shootings frequently unravel under legal scrutiny.
One witness told the Washington Post that he heard a man—Lorenzo—gurgling and shouting “Me estan matando”—they’re killing me, a haunting echo of “I can’t breathe,” the final words of Eric Garner and George Floyd, two others killed by law enforcement.
Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the oldest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, accused ICE of a coverup.
“In the absence of facts from ICE we are left to conclude a man was unlawfully killed on the streets of Houston,” he said. “It’s unacceptable and un-American to use lethal force against a human being and lock away the evidence and expect his family, the people of Houston, the American people to say ‘We believe you.’ We don’t believe you. ICE has not earned that trust from the American people.”
“This is a tragedy,” Rep. Garcia said at the press conference. “A family led by a man here thirty-five years with absolutely no criminal history. Remember Renée Good? Has ICE learned nothing from that experience?”
“Someone losing their life is a big goddamn deal,” Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) said at the press conference. Menefee emphasized that Houstonians are deeply familiar with immigrants, regardless of status. “We are a city of undocumented immigrants, they are our neighbors.”
[...]
The shooting is the first big test for a Department of Homeland Security that has tried in recent months to avoid the kind of imagery we saw earlier this year of Renée Good and Alex Pretti being killed in the streets of Minneapolis and Border Patrol officer Greg Bovino ghoulishly swooping after publicity. The department has sought to refashion itself as a more professional organization that makes less noise while still executing the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Just this Monday, in fact, Politico Playbook asked whether the mass deportation drive was softening or whether ICE had simply gotten better at avoiding negative attention. They reported that Markwayne Mullin, the new homeland security secretary, championed a “quieter and smarter” approach, and that the nation shouldn’t “expect another Minneapolis anytime soon.”
Reduced media attention, though, does not mean a less extreme approach to deportations. On Monday, White House Border Czar Tom Homan admitted what activists, lawmakers, and analysts have been observing for a while: that half of those targeted by ICE do not have criminal records.
ICE terrorists shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a not too dissimilar manner to Alex Pretti and Renee Good while picking up a crew for a construction project. #AbolishICE
See Also:
The Guardian: ‘He did not deserve to die’: family of man fatally shot by ICE agent speaks out
The Michael Fanone Show (Michael Fanone and Peter Rothpletz): ICE Killed Again
Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to his doorstep and waited outside of his hotel after he criticized them—now David Streever is suin
Alix Breeden at Daily Kos:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to his doorstep and waited outside of his hotel after he criticized them—now David Streever is suing.
Streever, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is coming for ICE officials for impeding on his First Amendment rights in a lawsuit filed July 6.
Simply put, JT Morris, the deputy director of litigation at FIRE, told Daily Kos that this case is about “ICE trying to intimidate an American into silence.”
In January, Streever—like many Americans—was upset over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Taking to his email, he located then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’ email address and gave him a piece of his mind for defending the federal officials involved in the shootings rather than standing in support of Good or Pretti.
“The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall,” Streever wrote to Lyons in a January 2026 email. “Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness.”
Streever went on to tell Lyons that he will “never know peace” and that, while Lyons might try to “escape the burden of knowing the truth” about himself, he will not be able to outrun it. “You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.”
Apparently, this email was strongly worded enough to prompt ICE to show up at Streever’s home in Rochester, New York. In June, Nest home footage provided by FIRE shows two agents knocking at his door.
Not shown but documented in the press release, the agents talked to Streever’s wife. While she informed them that he and their daughter were out of the country on vacation and would be back in the coming days, they handed her a letter with a “WARNING NOTICE” stating that he “May be in violation of federal law.”
But the agents didn’t stop there. ICE officials located Streever and his young daughter’s travel itinerary and ascended upon their hotel in New York city late in the evening, according to the lawsuit, to wake up Streever in person.
[...]
In a lawsuit similar to Streever’s, Paigelynn Gonyea was also served a letter from ICE after she posted a video to social media naming Jonathan Ross as Good’s shooter. Soon after, ICE agents showed up at a polling station in Syracuse, New York, where Gonyea was working to give her the warning.
Terrorist ICE thugs are now coming after US citizens who criticize the Gestapo-like agency, such as what David Streever went through after sending an email blistering then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons over his defenses of the unjust ICE killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Litzy Munoz says her husband, Giovanni Sosa, was driving down 13th Street near Arthur last Friday when several unmarked squad cars surrounde
Litzy Munoz says her husband, Giovanni Sosa, was driving down 13th Street near Arthur last Friday when several unmarked squad cars surrounded him. By the time she arrived at the scene, he was already gone.
Munoz says her one-year-old daughter asks when her father is coming home.
"She goes around the house looking for him, saying, Papa," Munoz said. "She doesn't know when he's going to be back."
[...]
"I'm just really hoping that he's able to come back home," Munoz said.
The family is now scrambling to raise thousands of dollars to cover legal fees and has since launched a fundraiser.
Giovanni's first immigration court hearing is next Friday, when the family hopes he will be released on bond while a judge determines whether he may remain in the United States.
Hello everyone I’m sharing this on behalf of Litzy Munoz- Sosa , her hus… Hiliana Ruiz needs your support for Support Giovanni's Fight to St
“They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in."
Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket:
Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents confronted a poll worker at a voting site in Syracuse, New York, as she was helping carry out the state’s recent primary elections.
The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) told Democracy Docket it’s reviewing a report on the alarming incident, which again raises the specter of federal agents interfering in active elections.
PaigeLynne Gonyea, who was working at a voting site at a public library Tuesday, said on social media that the agents came to warn her to remove a social media account that they claimed broke federal law by threatening federal law enforcement agents.
In fact, Gonyea appears to have only shared information about an ICE agent involved in a fatal Minnesota shooting that had been previously published online and reported in the press.
The incident comes as prominent figures on the far right have called on President Donald Trump to deploy ICE agents and troops to polling places in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections as part of a clear effort to intimidate voters and election workers.
Federal and state laws largely bar the deployment of law enforcement to polling places. However, the Trump administration has never definitively ruled out the tactic, while senior Department of Justice officials — including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — have endorsed it.
[...]
“BREAKING: The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!” her post read.
If she didn’t remove her account, Gonyea could face “both federal and state prosecution,” according to a document she received during the confrontation. She said the agents asked her to sign the document to acknowledge she received the warning, but she refused.
New York State poll worker Paigelynne Gonyea was intimidated by terrorist ICE agents over her post revealing the name of the ICE goon who shot Renee Nicole Good: Jonathan Ross. They demanded the post be removed from social media, and she rightly didn’t bend the knee.
Friends and family of the child pleading for information
Cory Davenport at The Lovejoy Desk:
Yesterday, in Morrisonville, Illinois, near Jacksonville, Jesus Alexis Cruz, 16, was one of three people detained following a traffic stop. Cruz, who was on his way to work from Collinsville, was taken by agents under the umbrella of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alongside Hector Cruz Sanchez and Jonathan Godoy, who are each 19.
Anna Bell, an Edwardsville-based activist who is close to the family, posted on social media and told me in Facebook direct messages that Jesus’s aunt and uncle, who are both documented, immediately sought to have the child released into their custody. They were denied.
Congressperson Nikki Budzinski (D), who represents this area in D.C., confirmed she was aware of the detention of three Collinsville teenagers. She told Ivy Lyons at The Telegraph that the taking of a child “raises serious concerns.”
Bell said that Jesus was transferred to Texas, despite potentially being eligible for release into the family’s custody. The other two teens, who are legally adults, were taken to an ICE detention center in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, which Budzinski herself toured earlier this week with fellow Democrat representative and AIPAC-funded primary candidate Wesley Bell, from Missouri’s contentious First Congressional district.
Anna Bell (no relation to Wesley) said that she was told the boys were pulled over due to a “license plate issue,” which she disputes, because the vehicle was a company vehicle. She believes the entire stop was due to non-white folks being profiled by rural Illinois police. Because Illinois police are not able to work directly with ICE under state rules, Anna Bell said the police took their vehicle, leaving the boys on the side of the road with their bags. It was at this point that ICE was alerted.
She said the adults were sent to Ste. Genevieve, but told me that Jesus was driven by a random family to an ICE detention center for children in Texas.
Yesterday in Morrisonville, Illinois, terrorist ICE thugs kidnapped 16-year-old Jesús Alexis Cruz and 19-year-olds Héctor Cruz Sánchez and Jonathan Godoy. Cruz was sent to an ICE concentration camp in Texas, while Godoy and Sánchez were taken to an ICE detention center in St. Genevieve County, Missouri.
This is a disgrace fueled by the Trump Regime's punitive actions on immigrants, and also why ICE should be abolished!
See Also:
STLPR: Collinsville teens ‘kidnapped’ by ICE while on the way to work in central Illinois
KSDK: ICE detained 3 Collinsville teens on Tuesday, raising 'serious concerns' among family and officials
