Lorenzo Salgado's last morning: an American dream cut short

The last day of Lorenzo Salgado's life began like most of his mornings for the past 35 years: he woke early, washed up, kissed his wife, pet his dog and left for work, according to his son.

An hour later, he was shot dead by an immigration agent.

Born in Tlatlaya, Mexico, on March 3, 1974, Lorenzo Salgado was a man of routine, Ronaldo Salgado, his eldest son, told a press conference on Wednesday, the day after his death.

That morning, he dressed, took the lunch and coffee his wife had prepared for him, put on his hat and went out at 5:50 am.

The owner of a small construction business, he picked up his workers every morning. At 6:45 am, he would have been picking up a last crew member before heading to North Houston to build houses.

"At 6:55, unbeknownst to all of us, my dad had been shot inside his van" by ICE agents traveling in unmarked cars, Ronaldo Salgado said.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said that an officer fired in self-defense, and that the FBI will investigate "the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer."

"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," a DHS statement said.

"The federal government told us the same story, nearly word for word" about Minneapolis protester Renee Good, said Juan Proano of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

Video from Good's killing in January drew widespread debate over whether she was merely attempting to flee, and the proportionality of the response.

Another demonstrator, Alex Pretti, was killed by US Customs and Border Protection officers later that month, as Minneapolis residents turned out in force to protest anti-immigrant raids.

Salgado's is the first known fatal shooting involving federal agents involved in immigration enforcement since then.

LULAC and the family are demanding an investigation of the shooting, calling it "possible murder."

As night fell Wednesday on the Magnolia Park neighborhood where the shooting occurred, AFP journalists saw around 2,000 people holding vigil for Salgado, with some marching through the streets chanting "ICE out of Houston!"

- Crying for help -

That morning, Ronaldo got a call from his mother who told him "something bad" had happened to his father involving ICE.

He drove to his father's work site, but found no one there.

Then Ronaldo saw a post on social media reporting ICE activity in the East End, a heavily Latino working class neighborhood of Houston. 

The younger Salgado found streets there blocked and saw his father's van -- but no sign of him.

As he frantically called family and friends, he saw a video on Facebook showing the scene, with ICE agents holding men down on the ground.

"I recognized him immediately. Not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out," Ronaldo Salgado recounted, weeping. 

The video also shows other men lying face down -- presumably two workers -- and a relative who worked with them.

Salgado learned that his father had been taken to Ben Taub Hospital, the same hospital where he and his two brothers were born. There, too, they told him nothing.

"I found out about my father's death from a news story on social media," he said.

- 'His American dream'  -

Lorenzo Salgado had been in the United States for 35 years and was not a legal resident.

But he was well on his way to "attaining his American dream," Ronaldo Salgado said.

"We dotted every I, crossed every T, filled every document, attended every appointment. He was close to obtaining his legal status."

He said his father would not have fled from ICE but probably tried to get away from aggressive unmarked vehicles, fearing he was about to be robbed of the tools with which he earned his living.

According to the Pew Research Center, there were some 14 million illegal immigrants living in the United States in 2023.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that undocumented immigrants paid about $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022.

After building many homes in the Houston suburbs, Lorenzo Salgado finally built his own, where he would sit every evening after work, listening to music and petting his dog, Ronaldo Salgado said.

"He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of 'Mexican man shot and killed by ICE,'" his heartbroken American son said.

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© Agence France-Presse