DHS has a track record of lying about the people ICE officers shoot.
Matt Shuham at HuffPost:
Witnesses to an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on Tuesday are currently in ICE custody and being pressured to “self-deport,” according to a representative of their families, raising concerns about a potential “cover-up” related to the incident. The men — Víctor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the deceased’s brother, as well as Daniel Tirado Pantoja and José Trinidad Rojas Pliego — were in the same work vehicle as Salgado Araujo when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer opened fire Tuesday and killed him, said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, to HuffPost on Thursday. Proaño was speaking for the families of the three men. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed — so far without any evidence — that the shooting was in “self-defense.” “We’ve been in contact with the families of the men” who were in the vehicle at the time of the shooting, Proaño said. “We know specifically that they have been pressured to sign self-deportation orders.”
Worryingly, the men do not yet have legal representation and seem inclined to sign the voluntary departure orders, Proaño said. “We’re working really, really hard to see if we can find representation for them — and to make sure that we can get their witness statements, their accounts of what actually happened,” he said. [...]
“What we fear is that this is another effort from ICE to cover up something that they did very, very wrong,” said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of the civil rights organization FIEL Houston, to Democracy Now. It is unclear whether Espinosa had spoken directly to the family members of the detained men or was relaying others’ reports. At a press conference Wednesday, Salgado Araujo’s family and community advocates called for full transparency from the Trump administration, as well as an independent investigation of the shooting.
Salgado Araujo’s eldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, said that his father had been prepared for the possibility of being stopped by ICE personnel given recent immigration enforcement activity in the area. Salgado said his family, including his father, had “so many conversations” about what to do if approached by immigration officers: He would not sign anything, and would instead work from detention with family and lawyers to secure his legal release.
[...] In the Department of Homeland Security’s telling, ICE officers on Tuesday “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop” of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who then “attempted to evade arrest.”
Citing “information we are receiving,” the department’s statement then said that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle” 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.” The statement also said the DHS inspector general’s office was leading an investigation into the “agent-involved shooting,” and that “FBI Houston is leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
Witnesses to the ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo are currently under ICE custody and are being pressured to “self-deport.”
