In less than a week, ICE has viciously taken the lives of two more people: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
On Tuesday, July 7, 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo left his Houston home early in the morning to go to work. He never returned to his family. Originally from Mexico, he had been in the United States for 35 years while building his life, running his own construction company and raising three children. On the morning of the 7th, after picking up two of his coworkers to go to the construction site where they worked, they were soon pursued by two unmarked SUVs with ICE agents inside. This led to an exchange where Salgado Araujo was shot in the torso and eventually bled to death. As he laid in the street, he cried for help saying, “¡Me están matando!”, or “They are killing me!” He wasn’t even their intended target.
ICE has since claimed that Salgado Araujo had used his van as weapon to try and ram it into the officers and their vehicles. But as has been the case in nearly every ICE killing, none of the video evidence from security cameras in the area supports this claim. All Salgado Araujo’s coworkers also dispute this claim. Not one of the ICE officers were wearing body cameras, and there were no videos from the ICE vehicles.
Less than a week later, another man, reported to be 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was killed in his car in Biddeford, Maine on the morning of June 13. Details are still emerging from the situation, but so far eyewitnesses describe seeing Sebastian Guerrero bloodied in his car and saying clearly, “‘I tried to stop…” His wife and his three-year-old daughter were reported to be at the bloody scene of the murder and will now have to live a life without him.
Once again, ICE is already claiming that Sebastian Guerrero had “weaponized” his vehicle to try run over ICE officers, while once again having no body camera or vehicle camera footage to back up their claim. Officials even acknowledged once again that Sebastian Guerrero was not the target of the initial warrant.
Since Trump has taken office for his second term, there have been at least 21 shootings by ICE, and these men are the 10th and 11th people to be killed.
Now that ICE’s own internal guidance has increased from the goal of 1,000 arrests per day to 2,000 arrests per day, they are on a collision course to make these sorts of brutal encounters inevitable as they operate as a paramilitary force without regard for who they go after and who they hurt.
These open murders must be stopped!
Throughout the country, there have been demonstrations against the brutality of ICE. Today in Biddeford, only hours after Sebastian Guerrero had been murdered, hundreds of protestors marched and dozens protested angrily outside Senator Susan Collins’ office, forcing her office to shut down. This is what needs to be done everywhere!
We have the power to stop this. But it will take us hitting the streets in larger and larger numbers and with greater and greater power. We are the vast majority. We make this society run. We can prevent the deaths of more innocent people. And we can bring this murderous regime and its policies to an end.
