Congressional leaders, including Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, are demanding answers regarding recent high-profile deaths involving immigration agents.
Salinas, a Tigard Democrat representing Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, joined Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at the Harris County Commissioners Court in Houston last week to address the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father and business owner who was on his way to work on July 7 when a federal immigration official shot and killed him in Houston.
He came to the U.S. 35 years ago and was in the process of obtaining his work permit, his relatives said. A week after his death, another immigration official shot and killed 25-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a father to a 3-year-old and Colombian national, in Maine.
To investigate the circumstances behind the deaths, the Democrats convened a shadow oversight hearing, a type of hearing that did not receive approval from the Republican House majority.
The hearing lasted more than two hours, and it included six witnesses, including Salgado Araujo’s sons.
“How many more of our dads have to die?” asked Ronaldo Salgado, the older son. “How many more children have to wait hopelessly for answers? How many more wives will have to suffer the loss of their life partner? I urge all of you, esteemed members of Congress, and your colleagues, to take action.”
Oregon ICE encounters caused injuries, no deaths
Salinas, who wiped tears from her face as the sons testified, said she sees her father in Salgado Araujo because he also came to Texas from Mexico.
“My big takeaway was that our communities are definitely less safe by what ICE is doing right now,” she told the Capital Chronicle.
In her district, which spans Polk and Yamhill counties, as well as parts of Marion, Clackamas, and Washington counties, federal immigration agents in November detained a 17-year-old McMinnville high school student during a lunch break, shattering his car window and ignoring his pleas about being a U.S. citizen. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on X said the student was using his vehicle to impede federal officers.
Then in January, federal immigration agents injured a woman in her vehicle on her way to pick up a cake for her grandson. The agents shattered her car window, forcibly removed her from her car and threw her to the ground until realizing she had a U.S. passport. She sustained a torn rotator cuff, a concussion and bruised ribs, the Salem Reporter reported.
And most recently, Oregon State Police and the FBI opened an investigation into a July 17 incident in Woodburn in which three people allegedly impersonated federal immigration officers and detained and assaulted an individual, resulting in the person seeking medical treatment for injuries sustained during the incident.
Salinas said she supports independent investigations for the people ICE agents have injured. However, federal immigration agents aren’t held to the same legal accountability standards as local law enforcement and it is more difficult to sue federal agents.
“Where is the integrity of this agency?” Salinas said. “There is none. It is horrific to think that they would indiscriminately just kill somebody and then use the same excuse that they have used over and over again that nobody is buying that he was trying to use his vehicle as a weapon, and yet furnish no proof.”
Congressional Democrats frustrated by lack of transparency
At least six congressional coalitions sent letters to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security demanding answers about its role in fatal shootings, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the Texas Democrat who represents the district where Salgado Araujo died.
“I have been told by the director of Homeland Security that they don’t intend to give us any answers until their investigation is complete, so that’s why hearings like these matter, so that we can get some answers,” Garcia said.
Salinas said her priority is supporting a discharge petition led by Garcia related to an immigration reform bill. A discharge petition allows a majority of House members to bypass chamber leadership when bills are blocked from reaching the floor. If 218 members sign the petition, it forces a House vote.
Garcia’s bill aims to provide individuals who were brought into the U.S. as children and living without legal status with an earned pathway to citizenship. The legislation would also allow eligible recipients of Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure to obtain lawful permanent resident status.
“We are not capturing the worst of the worst right now, so the best thing that we could do would be to pass an immigration bill,” Salinas said, adding that she also supports passing legislation requiring immigration agents to wear body cameras.
In the case of Salgado Araujo, the Department of Homeland Security initially said he was the target of detention, but later admitted he was not the intended target. The federal agency also said he weaponized his vehicle against the agents — a claim the three men riding in the vehicle with him disputed and one that publicly released surveillance footage so far does not support.
The federal agents detained the three men who were in the car with Salgado Araujo when he died, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not identified the agent who killed Salgado Araujo.
“We don’t know if he has been taken off assignment, so he could still be on the streets of Houston,” Salinas said. “We have no idea. All of that needs to be disclosed.”
Commented