ICE Shootings

The Trump administration has promoted its aggressive immigration crackdown with a simple promise: ICE will focus on “the worst of the worst.” Violent criminals. Gang members. Drug traffickers. Dangerous fugitives.

That promise wasn’t merely political rhetoric. It was the administration’s justification for an unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement. Americans were told the disruption, the fear and the enormous cost would be worth it because the truly dangerous people would finally be removed from our communities.

Then came Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

The 52-year-old Mexican immigrant wasn’t the target of the ICE operation in Houston. According to the Department of Homeland Security, agents were after someone else. Salgado was driving to work when an ICE officer shot and killed him. His family says he had lived in the United States for more than 35 years. He apparently had no criminal record. Surveillance video has since raised serious questions about the government’s version of events.

Less than a week later, it happened again.

Twenty-five-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Maine.

He wasn’t a cartel boss. He wasn’t a gang leader. He wasn’t a violent felon. He was a father. He also appears to have had no criminal record.

But these weren’t the first names. They were merely the latest.

In January, ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good, an unarmed American citizen and mother, during an immigration operation in Minneapolis. Federal officials initially portrayed her as a threat, but subsequent investigations, including the medical examiner’s ruling and evidence that later emerged, cast serious doubt on the government’s account. Prosecutors have since fought for months to obtain evidence federal authorities initially withheld, including body-camera footage and witness statements.

Just weeks later, Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis intensive-care nurse and U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by federal agents while observing an immigration operation. Federal officials claimed he had threatened agents, but video evidence reported by multiple news organizations raised serious questions about that narrative as well. His family, like Good’s, spent months battling the federal government simply to obtain basic evidence surrounding his death.

Notice the pattern? First comes the shooting. Then comes the official statement portraying the dead as dangerous. Then comes the slow release of contradictory evidence. Then comes the government’s reluctance to disclose body-camera footage (if it exists at all), witness statements and investigative files.

Now, as if the administration sensed its narrative in Houston was beginning to unravel, federal authorities took the unusual step of publicly unsealing a search warrant suggesting investigators had found bags containing a “white crystal-like substance” in Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s work van. The implication was obvious: perhaps the man who wasn’t the target of the operation deserved what happened after all.

But Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare quickly pushed back, saying there is no confirmed evidence the substance was an illegal drug and that laboratory testing remains incomplete. More importantly, he emphasized that even if drugs were eventually found, it would have no bearing on whether the ICE agent was legally justified in using deadly force. In other words, the administration appears to be smearing Lorenzo Salgado in the court of public opinion before it has fully explained why he was shot in the first place.

It’s all part of a larger pattern. If federal agents acted lawfully, transparency should strengthen their case. Instead, transparency appears to be treated as the enemy.

So here’s the question the administration needs to answer. If these are the casualties of a campaign supposedly aimed at “the worst of the worst,” where exactly are the worst of the worst? Because the public isn’t seeing MS-13 kingpins. It’s seeing men driving cars. It’s seeing fathers. It’s seeing mothers. It’s seeing people whose biggest offense appears to have been living in the United States without legal status.

Every law enforcement agency makes mistakes. Split-second decisions can have tragic consequences. But when those tragedies happen twice in less than a week—and both victims appear to bear little resemblance to the public image used to sell the policy—the burden shifts.

The government doesn’t get to simply repeat its slogan. It has to explain the bodies. This is what happens when political slogans become law enforcement strategy. Agents are under enormous pressure to produce numbers. Politicians celebrate record arrests.

The definition of “the worst of the worst” quietly expands until it means almost anyone ICE encounters. Eventually, innocent bystanders—or people who were never the intended targets—become collateral damage in a campaign that promised precision.

When government agents kill someone who wasn’t the intended target—or someone who appears to have no violent criminal history—the burden isn’t on the public to explain away the shooting. The burden is on the government to explain why it happened.

Every government has the authority to enforce immigration law. But with that authority comes an obligation to exercise power carefully, proportionately and transparently. The more force the government employs, the greater its responsibility to demonstrate that force was necessary. The Trump administration has repeatedly failed to do so, because it has nothing but contempt for accountability and the Americans who demand it.

All the more reason to continue demanding it.