department policy and law enforcement best practices

On Tuesday, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the latest in a string of shootings by ICE officers who later claimed the victim attempted to hit them with a car. 

Salgado Araujo was driving three men to a work site early Tuesday morning when they noticed an unmarked vehicle following them, according to a Texas Tribune interview with Hugo Balderas Ibarra, an attorney representing two of the three passengers in the van with Salgado Araujo. Surveillance footage captured snippets of the leadup to the shooting; an unmarked vehicle driving in the oncoming traffic lane to pass Salgado Araujo’s white van, and an agent opening the passenger door. 

“My clients reiterated that at no point was there ever an agent standing in front of the vehicle, nor was an agent ever placed in the line of danger,” Balderas Ibarra said in a news conference Friday. 

The killing of Salgado Araujo marked the 21st shooting by immigration agents since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Four people have been shot at in Minnesota, resulting in two deaths. 

In many such cases — including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — video evidence contradicted the government’s accounts, though the feds so far have rarely investigated officers for their use of force. 

And, in the majority of cases, federal agents shot someone who was inside a car. 

Policing and use-of-force experts have long advised law enforcement officers not to stand in front of, or shoot at, vehicles. 

“Most of the policies I’ve seen around the country tell officers you don’t shoot at vehicles except as a last resort,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a policing researcher at the University of South Carolina who has taught at the FBI National Academy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. “But you can’t have that last resort if you’re the one who put yourself in that position — we call that officer-created jeopardy.”

On July 1, an ICE officer shot at Clemente Lara-Hernandez in Harrisburg, Pa., as he tried to drive away from the agents ordering him to get out of the vehicle. An ICE spokesman said the shooting happened because Lara-Hernandez “weaponized” his vehicle by “ramming it” into the feds’ sedan, according to reporting by PennLive.

But surveillance footage obtained by PennLive shows agents breaking the driver’s side window, then firing at the vehicle after Lara-Hernandez drove around the ICE vehicle, clipping the front end as he fled.

In the Chicago area during the September immigration surge dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ICE agent shot and killed 38-year-old Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez. Agents said Villegas-Gonzalez hit and dragged an officer with his car, causing serious injuries, but video from the scene casts doubt on whether an agent was hit at all; one officer said immediately after the incident that his injuries were “nothing major.”

When ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Good in January, that was the ninth shooting in four months, all of them involving people in cars. 

Not every shooting was caught on camera. 

An ICE officer shot at a St. Paul man in December. The agents’ stories don’t add up.

In December, ICE agents fired at a St. Paul man, Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero, as he attempted to evade arrest. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted on X accusing Rodriguez Romero of using his car to ram multiple agents, asserting that the agent fired shots in self-defense, though interviews with agents on the scene contradicted the official account. 

The U.S. Department of Justice charged Rodriguez Romero with assaulting federal officers but dropped the charges six months later for lack of evidence. No video has emerged of the incident. 

The federal government has rarely investigated or punished officers for the shootings, nor has it released the names of agents involved. (ICE opened investigations into two officers accused of making false statements after one of the agents, Christian Castro, allegedly shot Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis in January. Castro is facing state charges.)

“When there’s no discipline and there’s no being held accountable for doing something like that, it becomes a practice and a pattern,” Alpert said.

Salgado Araujo’s family is calling for an independent investigation into the shooting.