Statement on the State Violence against Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 13, 2026

Standing for Democracy stands in solidarity with the family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was brutally shot to death by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on July 8th in Houston. 

This murder has horrified and enraged people throughout the US and is the inevitable outcome of the cruel and horrifying mass deportation campaign unleashed by the Trump administration. Their enforcement tactics are not administrative - they are inhumane and are a tool of ethnic cleansing as they seek to define “American” solely as those who are white Christian nationalists. The videos of this murder cannot help but elicit the deepest kind of outrage and grief among the US public. 

Lorenzo was a working man who worked at his small construction company. His son, Ronaldo Salgado, said of his father, "He was a hard-working family man who never wanted his name to be known by anyone outside of his family. He wanted nothing else in life but to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people." Like the millions of immigrants who power the United States through their work, their culture, their food, and their hopes and dreams, Lorenzo built a life that embodied the values America so often celebrates: hard work, perseverance, and devotion to family."

And now he’s gone because ICE officers are implementing a White Christian Nationalist agenda, led by an authoritarian government that stops at nothing to defend their illegal actions. The lies that ICE offers in defense of the murder of Lorenzo are identical to the lies that they are recycling from other of their murders across the country, including Minneapolis and Oregon.

We cannot allow a repeat of this lack of accountability. Standing for Democracy is a worker-centered, anti-fascist project established to defend and expand our democracy. Together with organizations and people across the U.S., we demand an independent investigation into Lorenzo’s killing and full accountability for the agent who gunned him down. These types of government assassinations are a clear sign of the fascist danger that we must challenge and defeat, and why we completely support the call to Abolish ICE. 

Now more than ever is the time to turn grief into strength and action – to demand a complete stop to the immigrant deportation campaign, the release of the tens of thousands of children, women, and men held in ICE detention centers, and full accountability by ICE for all of its brutality and killings of immigrants and non-immigrants.

Si Se Puede!

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