HOUSTON — Despite the sweltering heat, María Guadalupe Rodriguez kneeled in front of the makeshift memorial for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man killed Tuesday by federal immigration agents.
Rodriguez, a U.S. permanent resident and a longtime neighbor of Magnolia Park, the Houston neighborhood where the shooting happened, wiped her tears as she prayed.
"I feel rage," Rodriguez told NPR in Spanish.
Salgado Araujo was a 52-year-old Mexican national who worked in construction for more than three decades. The father of three was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after they attempted to pull him over. The Department of Homeland Security says Salgado Araujo tried to use his van as a weapon, prompting an agent to fire their weapon.
DHS has not provided video evidence to support that claim. The agency said the agents were not wearing body cameras.
Rodriguez didn't know Salgado Araujo, but she said she feels for him and his family. Rodriguez said she feels like no immigrant is safe under President Trump's immigration crackdown.
"Why use a gun when you want to deport someone?" Rodriguez said.
Her neighborhood, she said, is usually calm and safe. But recently it has felt dangerous — not because of criminals, but because of an increased presence of federal immigration agents.
How much of an increase is unclear. The Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to NPR's request of a breakdown of arrests in Houston over the last eight weeks.
But neighbors and immigrant-rights organizations told NPR they have seen an uptick in immigration arrests and sightings of ICE agents over the last few weeks. They track potential sightings on social media and community-run chats.
Spike in ICE sightings, conflicting evidence from DHS
Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of the Houston-based immigrant-rights organization FIEL, told NPR his group believes there had been a decrease in ICE presence over the last six months.
But over the last two weeks his organization started to receive more reports of ICE sightings.
"Unfortunately, it was just a matter of time for a tragedy to happen … at the end of the day, you know, being the fourth largest city, it was just a matter of time," Espinosa said. "We hope that it never happens again, but in seeing the uptick and how immigration and how ICE handles itself, unfortunately, we see a bleak outlook."
FIEL has 60,000 members in the Greater Houston Area, Espinosa said, meaning "we have literally eyes and ears everywhere."
He said immigrant-majority communities in Houston like Magnolia Park and Gulfton have been the main targets of federal agents.
"Every single morning we look up, we usually have messages from people saying, 'Oh, I saw ICE here, I saw ICE there,'" Espinosa said. "And they're using the same tactics: They usually target people in the working-class communities and working-class neighborhoods in the early morning hours as people are getting ready to go to work."
That's exactly the tactic ICE appears to have deployed in the case of Salgado Araujo.
According to his family, Araujo left his home around 5:50 a.m. on Tuesday and drove his white van to pick up workers to go to a construction site. He had been living in the U.S. without legal status for nearly 35 years. His son told reporters Salgado Araujo was in the process of getting a work permit.
Immigration agents intercepted the van in the Magnolia Park neighborhood. At least one agent shot Salgado Araujo after trying to pull him over. DHS said in a statement Salgado Araujo "attempted to evade arrest."
"From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense," the agency said.
However, witnesses dispute this account. Hugo Baldera-Ibarras, an attorney representing two of the men in the van with Salgado Araujo, told reporters Friday agents were never in front of the van, and that the shots came from the side of the car.
Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, told reporters Salgado Araujo was not the intended target of ICE agents. A DHS official told NPR in a statement it had been surveilling a home in Houston when agents saw a person that "resembled the target" in the van being driven by Salgado Araujo.
Neighbors feel less safe with ICE around
The latest incident has angered the Latino community in Houston and has left others fearful.
Omar, a 30-year-old electrician who asked NPR to identify him by his middle name because he has undocumented family members, told NPR he grew up near the intersection where the shooting happened.
"There're people that's actually trying to make a living and, like, go to work and do something for themselves, provide for the family, get a better future, and they target them just because they're Mexican," Omar said.
For Omar, this moment feels personal.
"That could have been my brother," Omar said, his voice shaking while he held back tears. "That would have hurt a lot."
Jorge Luis Gonzalez lives a few houses down from where Salgado Araujo was shot.
He said the presence of ICE agents is making people feel unsafe. He recalls seeing law enforcement agents searching for evidence near his property.
"They could have shot my house! My room is right next to the window!" Gonzalez said. "They could have shot my old lady. Come on, man! I got grandsons!"
He said he has recently seen ICE agents at the nearby gas stations and the Mexican grocery store.
The neighbors interviewed by NPR all said they don't expect to see fewer ICE agents in the city after the shooting.
Esmeralda Ledezma with the Houston-based immigrant-rights group Woori Juntos, says her group has seen reports of ICE arrests in the days following the shooting.
"Maybe they're not going to the grocery store and like locking everyone in," Ledezma said. "But I think we're seeing more targeted attempts to get people, going to their houses, going to their places of work, and that creates less attention on it to kind of fly more under the radar and not scare people out of going outside."
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