Protests Over Two Fatal ICE Shootings Continue as House Democrats Hold Houston Field Hearing

Two Men Shot Dead by ICE, Eight Days and 1,900 Miles Apart

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was killed by an ICE officer during a vehicle stop in Houston on July 7, 2026. He was a Mexican national who had lived and worked in the United States without legal status for more than 30 years^[3][6]. DHS says officers stopped his white work van by mistake. They were looking for a different man in a similar vehicle^[6].

Eight days later, on July 13, an ICE officer shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Durán Guerrero was a Colombian citizen who worked as a DoorDash delivery driver. His wife and 3-year-old daughter were there when it happened^[12][13].

Neither shooting was captured on agency video. Officers in both stops were not wearing body cameras^[19]. The day after the Maine shooting, ICE told agents to suspend most vehicle stops nationwide so officials could review training. The White House reversed that pause within two days, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying vehicle stops would continue because they are a tool ICE needs for enforcement.

The deaths set off protests that are still going. On Friday, July 24, dozens of people rallied outside the Customs and Border Protection station in Indio, California, waving American and Mexican flags^[1]. That same morning, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee held a field hearing in Houston called "Seeking Justice." ICE, DHS and the FBI were invited. All three declined to attend^[2][3][4].

What Nobody Disputes

Some facts here are not in question. DHS itself says the Houston stop was a case of mistaken identity — officers were after someone else entirely^[6]. Investigations are open on both sides of the encounter: DHS's inspector general is reviewing the officer's conduct, and the FBI's Houston field office is investigating what it called a "potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer^[5]."

That second investigation matters, because it shows where the two agencies are pointing. DHS's watchdog is looking at its own officer. The FBI's stated subject is the dead man's conduct^[5]. Both can run at once, and neither answers the other's question.

A federal judge has also stepped in on a separate but related point. He barred the deportation of a witness to the Houston shooting, which kept that person available to testify^[26]. And in Congress, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, the Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has said his panel is monitoring the investigations. He has not said whether he'll hold a hearing on either death^[27].

The Van That Both Stopped and Didn't

Here is where the record splits. DHS says Salgado Araujo "weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer," and that the officer who shot him fired in self-defense^[5][6]. In Maine, DHS says its officer fired "fearing for public safety" as Durán Guerrero tried to drive away^[12].

Two passengers who were riding in Salgado Araujo's van told a federal court something close to the opposite. In sworn statements, they said the van had come to a full stop, and that no officer was standing in front of it when the shots were fired^[5][30].

Those two accounts cannot both be true, and there's no camera footage to settle which one is. That absence is not an accident. ICE had a body-camera policy — Directive 19010.3 — that was rescinded by executive order in 2025^[19][20]. So the only record of what happened in either stop is what the people involved say happened.

Why the Evidence Sits in Federal Hands

That gap has a legal dimension that shapes everything downstream. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare opened a local investigation into the Houston shooting. But he says his office doesn't have the access it would normally have in an officer-involved shooting, because federal agencies control the evidence^[15].

There's a reason for that beyond bureaucracy. Federal officers have a legal protection, rooted in the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, that lets them move a state criminal case into federal court. There, a judge can dismiss it if the officer was doing his federal job and acted reasonably — even if he turns out to have been mistaken. If a federal judge agrees, the state case is over.

Supporters of that rule say it exists for a reason: without it, any of thousands of local prosecutors could tie up federal law enforcement for political reasons. Critics say it means the only body realistically able to hold an ICE officer accountable is the same government that employs him^[15]. Both things are true at once, which is the point of the mechanism, and the point of the fight over it.

Other details are shaping how the case is read before any of that plays out. An FBI search warrant affidavit says agents saw bags of a "white crystal-like substance" in Salgado Araujo's van that they believed was consistent with methamphetamine^[17]. The family's attorney says the substance was salt, of the kind outdoor workers mix with lemon and water in the Texas heat^[18]. Separately, CNN reported the ICE officer connected to the Maine shooting told a court in 2023 that a 2021 head injury had left him with lasting "cognitive deficits^[21]." CNN's own reporting notes it has not confirmed that this officer fired the fatal shot.

The Number Both Sides Use, and Why It Means Two Things

DHS's defense of its officers rests heavily on a claim about danger. The agency says vehicle attacks on ICE officers rose from 2 incidents to 68 over a one-year span, comparing January 2025 through January 2026 against the same period a year before^[8]. That is roughly a 3,300% increase, and DHS has cited similar jumps — 1,300% for assaults, 3,200% for vehicle attacks, 830% in earlier reporting^[7][9].

Both the small number and the big percentage are real, but they measure different things. Sixty-eight incidents in a year is the figure that describes how much danger officers are actually facing on the ground. The huge percentage comes from dividing by a starting number of just 2 — and dividing by a number that small will turn almost any increase into an enormous-looking percentage. It doesn't, on its own, show whether attacks are rising because more officers are on the road, because stops have become more confrontational, or because the definition of "attack" has broadened.

DHS's causal argument is that hostile language from sanctuary-city politicians has led to more people attacking officers with their vehicles^[7][8]. Critics don't have a competing number to offer for that specific claim, but they point out that officer risk and driver risk are not opposites — both can be rising at once, and neither cancels the other out.

Hearings for Some Deaths, Not Others

The political response has not been even, and that unevenness is itself part of the story. In January 2026, after ICE agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Republican chairs of the House and Senate homeland security committees scheduled oversight hearings quickly. Those hearings happened in February^[27]. Six months later, after two more fatal shootings, Congress has not held a similar hearing, and Republican leaders — including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — have said little publicly^[23][27].

Democrats say that silence reflects a system with no independent check: a fast-growing enforcement force, thin training, and no cameras^[2][3]. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the Hispanic Caucus chair, says eight people, including two U.S. citizens, have been killed by ICE agents during this administration^[3]. Democratic pressure did produce one concrete disclosure — ICE told lawmakers that one officer has been referred for discipline over use of force^[24].

Republicans and DHS counter that a congressional hearing held mid-investigation risks tainting witnesses and prejudging an officer who hasn't been charged with anything^[27]. They also argue that years of hostile rhetoric toward ICE, including from the same lawmakers now demanding cameras, created the environment officers work in today^[7][9].

Overseas, the framing shifts again. Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the Maine killing a "murder" of someone treated as "an inferior being devoid of rights," and Colombia's embassy has demanded a thorough investigation^[13][14]. Al Jazeera has run a running count of people killed in ICE operations, putting the figure at 10 or more^[29]. Chinese state media, by contrast, has covered the U.S. protests themselves — without mentioning the enforcement rationale behind them at all^[28].

That range of coverage — from Breitbart leading with the Harris County prosecutor's campaign donors^[16] to CNN leading with the officer's own medical history^[21] to Xinhua leading with disorder in American streets^[28] — says as much about who is telling the story as it does about what happened. What none of those outlets has is the one thing that would settle the central question in both shootings: a camera that was on when the shots were fired. For now, that question stays open, sitting in an FBI file, a DHS inspector general's file, and two sets of sworn statements that disagree.