Border czar Tom Homan has admitted there may have been an “issue” in the fatal ICE shooting of a man in Houston.
Homan, who acknowledged that he hasn’t seen footage of ICE agents fatally shooting 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7, initially scoffed at concerns that the federal agents’ use of an unmarked vehicle may have contributed to the fatal encounter.
“They have emergency lights and sirens,” Homan said, adding, “We’ll see how the investigation plays out, but they would be alive today if they simply complied with the vehicle stop by federal law enforcement.
“Just comply,” he said.
CBS Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan told Homan that the family of Salgado Araujo said he thought he was being robbed because it was an unmarked car, and that he had no idea they were law enforcement.
To that, Homan repeated, “They had emergency lights. They activate emergency lights.”
Brennan pointed Homan to the videos of the killing, which showed no such lights being activated.
“You’ve seen that on video? Because we haven’t,” she said.
“Seen what on video?” he asked.
“That there were lights, because the videos that we’ve seen there aren’t. And because there weren’t body cameras, it is hard to substantiate some of what you are sayings,” she replied.
“I have not seen the videos, but I am saying our vehicles are equipped with emergency lights. Now, if they didn’t activate the lights — again, I haven’t seen that video — if they didn’t activate their lights, then there’s an issue there,” Homan asserted.
“But I’m saying they are equipped with lights. So let me just caveat that, they should have been equipped with lights and sirens,” he elaborated. “But I do not know specifically if they activated those lights.”
Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by an ICE agent on his way to work in Houston last week.
The agency originally described the incident as targeted immigration enforcement, but it was later reported that Salgado Araujo was not the target of the operation.
Just days later, ICE agent David Brouillette fatally shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian-born father who was living and working in the U.S. legally and was not the target of the immigration operation that resulted in his death.
Their deaths have renewed calls for accountability for the agency, especially coming after the back-to-back killings earlier this year of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
