Faulty reasoning signals

• Framing Effect - 15.5%
• Negativity Bias - 12.2%
• Appeal to Emotion - 6.2%

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Houston man killed by ICE agent was not initial target, congresswoman says

Local // Immigration

Houston man killed by ICE agent was not initial target, Rep. Sylvia Garcia says

By Julián Aguilar , Staff Writer July 9, 2026

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man shot and killed Tuesday by a federal agent in East Houston, was not the initial target of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said Thursday evening.

“The acting director of ICE has confirmed that Salgado was not the target, and neither was his brother,” Garcia said. “But he provided no information as to why, if he was not a target, he ended up being the fatality. And that's the question that the family needs answered.”

READ MORE: LULAC demands Houston police investigation into ICE shooting death

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Salgado was shot early Tuesday on the 6800 block of Canal Street after ICE agents attempted to pull over the van he was driving with three other passengers, including his brother, as the work crew was on their way to a construction site.

Salgado’s family has demanded answers over what led to the fatal confrontation. Federal officials issued a statement Tuesday saying that Salgado refused to obey commands to pull over and that he had “weaponized” his vehicle, a white van, causing an immigration agent to fire his weapon in self-defense.

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The statement said agents had attempted to pull over the vehicle as part of a "targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alien." The family now knows that Salgado was not the intended target, Garcia said.

MORE COVERAGE: Can Houston officials investigate Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s death? Yes, but it would be complicated.

“It's just heartbreaking because they’re relieved (after) this whole picture that ICE is trying to perpetrate — that he may have been a bad actor,” she said.

“Now we know that he wasn't the target. But then it makes it even harder because if he wasn't, then why did he end up getting shot?”

ICE released a statement to the Associated Press stating that agents were investigating a tip a few weeks ago and saw two white vans at an address tied to their intended target.

As agents drove to that address on Tuesday, they saw a white van and a person inside the vehicle who resembled the man they were looking for. That van was driven by Salgado, who wasn't their target.

Garcia has called for an independent review of what led up to Tuesday’s shooting and relayed that request to ICE's acting director, David J. Venturella.

“I said, ‘Look, there's the commission on civil rights. These are civil rights violations. There's a U.N. commission on human rights. These are human rights issues,'” she said. “I said we need somebody outside of the internal fox-guarding-the-hen-house stuff.”

Immigration Reporter

Julián Aguilar is an immigration reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

An El Paso native, Aguilar’s journalism career began in 2007 at the Laredo Morning Times. He joined the Texas Tribune in 2009 and extensively reported on immigration, border security and the drug trade for the nonprofit news organization until 2021. His stories on immigration took him from El Paso to border towns in the Rio Grande Valley. Aguilar was part of a team of Tribune journalists who wrote a series of stories about “the reality and the rhetoric” about immigration in Texas. He journeyed by raft with smugglers who ferry people from Guatemala to Mexico, and rode with police officers patrolling the gang-controlled streets of El Salvador. After leaving the Tribune, Aguilar worked at KERA News from 2022 to 2024, then became a freelance reporter.

He attended the University of Texas and earned his master's degree in journalism at the University of North Texas.

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