On the morning of July 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents murdered a Houston construction worker on his way to work. Less than a week later, ICE agents murdered another man in Biddeford, Maine, who was also on his way to work.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man killed in Houston, had lived in the U.S. for over three decades, building the city of Houston, paying taxes, and raising three sons. He was in the process of “playing by the rules,” obtaining a work permit, and the Department of Homeland Security has admitted that he was not a target for deportation. His only crime was having brown skin, and for this he paid with his life.
Joan Sebastian Guerrero, the man killed in Maine, was the father of a three-year-old. According to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, Guerrero was authorized to work in the US and had been issued a social security number. The office of Maine Senator August King has said that Guerrero, like Salgado, was not the target of a warrant.
Although DHS officials have claimed that Salgado “weaponized” his vehicle, this has been contradicted by statements made by the other men in the van. Similar claims by the DHS, most notably in the case of the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in January in Minneapolis, have been disproved by video evidence. Conveniently, the ICE agents who killed Salgado had no body cameras nor dashcams, and the only witnesses, the passengers in Salgado’s van, are being held in detention and pressured to self-deport.
In Guerrero’s case, even the DHS version is that he was merely attempting to flee, which is not a justified basis for shooting a suspect.
As the UE officers noted in a statement issued last year, “the real purpose of immigration enforcement is to maintain a permanent underclass of workers afraid to stand up for their rights — which drags down wages and working conditions for all workers.” ICE has become a rogue agency foisting heavily armed and reckless agents onto our streets, with deadly consequences: these killings are the tenth and eleventh fatal shootings by ICE agents since January 2025.
We demand an independent investigation into both killings and the release of the three detainees who were witnesses to Salgado’s murder. Furthermore, we reiterate the demand made by rank-and-file delegates to our most recently convention for “the complete abolition of all ICE operations.” As the UE General Executive Board stated in January, militarized immigration enforcement, in which armed federal agents can simply kill people on the streets without a trace of due process, is incompatible with democracy.
Scott Slawson
General President
Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer
Kimberly Lawson
Director of Organization