Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed on a Houston street in the early morning hours of July 7. His death came from the bullet of an ICE officer under circumstances that are still hazy and without a thorough investigation and evidence from witnesses to the event we may never know what exactly happened at an intersection of Canal Street and and Wayside Drive. 

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo came to Houston from Mexico thirty five years ago and settled into the anonymity of Houston’s east end, a place of which I am quite familiar. My own grandfather purchased land and built a home in that area back in the nineteen twenties after coming from the area of Europe now known as Slovakia. He was attempting to get away from the subjugation of his people by the empire of Austria Hungary which was determined to create one culture. My grandfather’s language was outlawed in public spaces including in church. He saw a move to the United States as a way of beginning anew with infinite possibilities. Back then people were free to just arrive in the United States with few exceptions.

My mother and her family lived at 517 North Adams street in the shadow of downtown Houston. Much as with today’s immigrants they endured insults and taunts from neighbors but my grandfather urged his children to ignore the noise and become good citizens of this country and so they did. Such seems to be the story of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. From accounts from his family he was a man of routine who worked hard every single day to provide his family with a stable life. Because of his hard work they bloomed just as my mother and her siblings had done in the same part of town a century ago. 

The main difference between my grandfather and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is that Grandpa was able to come to the United States without any kind of permission. He showed up in Galveston and went to work building a life. For Mr. Salgado Araujo it was different. His coming to America was deemed illegal even though Mexicans had been crossing into the United States without question for decades until quotas and rules changed the status quo. Thus Lorenzo was no doubt hiding in the East end among legions of Mexicans and Hispanics who lived and worked there. In the meantime he appears to have been a model citizen save for the secret that he held in his heart. He created a business building homes. He paid taxes and provided jobs for others. He rose early and went to work and came home late to sit on his front porch to enjoy the life that he had built. He had three sons that he sent to college. One graduated from the University of Houston and became a teacher just like I did. Another went to Tufts University, an elite school for very bright students where he earned a degree in engineering. A third son is presently attending college. 

On July 7, Lorenzo set out for work just as he had done for decades. He drove his van to the intersection of Canal Street and Wayside Drive to pick up some workers so that they might travel to a site in north Houston where they were building a house. The rest of the story is unclear. The ICE officers claimed that when they attempted to stop Mr. Salgado Araujo he tried to drive away and in the process seemed to attempt to harm one of the agents. 

While that scenario sounds problematic on the surface further investigation shows that the ICE agents were wearing masks and were in unmarked cars. Knowing how dangerous that part of Houston can sometimes be it does not take much imagination to understand why Mr. Salgado Araujo might have panicked. I can’t say that I would have done anything differently myself. I can only imagine the terror of the poor man’s last moments of life. There is no telling what thoughts raced through his mind. Fear creates very dangerous situations.

The description of this man from his family and friends and neighbors is of a good man who somehow believed that coming to this country was necessary even as it was illegal. Over the years he had worked on the possibility of getting legal permission to stay. He had three all American sons and was a model citizen in every other sense of the word. He was not all that different from my grandfather whose focus was on providing his family with a good life through his labors. Ironically toward the end of his life my grandfather was beaten over the head by an officer with a baton in downtown Houston just because he looked foreign and out of place. Grandpa soon after had a massive stroke and weeks later he died.

Houston is mostly a welcoming and friendly city that in many ways seems more like a small town. We live and work together in harmony, helping each other in difficult times. People come here for the opportunities to find work. This is not a beautiful place but a very practical place, one where we mostly get along. We honor hard work like Lorenzo was doing. We are one of the most diverse cities in the nation. Everyone here has the kind of opportunity that my grandfather was seeking. It is heartbreaking to me that masked men in unmarked cars felt that it was justified to pursue a man just going to work mostly because he probably looked foreign to them. Even if he had politely complied he and his passengers might have simply disappeared without anyone knowing why. As it is nobody knows exactly where the other two men who were in the van were taken by ICE. 

It would be easy to just assume that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo brought this moment on himself from the time that he entered the United States illegally. Some will say that he should have just complied with those masked men in unmarked cars but I wonder what any of us would have done in such a frightening situation. It’s easy for those of us who did nothing but be born in the United States to talk about following the law. Only someone fleeing a life of difficulty might understand what brought this man to Houston in the first place. He had shown that he was a good man, a hard working individual contributing to our nation with his skills and with his three brilliant sons. His should have been an American dream, not the horror that ultimately changed the course of his life and his family’s life forever. His death is a blot on our nation. The full story of what happened on the day of his death must be told.