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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.”