In one week this July, ICE agents shot and killed two men in two different states. One was a father of three in Houston, Texas. The other was a young dad in Biddeford, Maine. Neither man was the person ICE was actually looking for. And in both cases, the government's story did not match what witnesses — and even members of Congress — say really happened.

A father of three in Houston

On July 7, 2026, an ICE agent shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in the stomach on a street in Houston's Second Ward. He died at the hospital. He was 52 years old. He had lived in the United States for 35 years. He ran a small construction business. He had three kids.

ICE says he tried to ram an agent with his van, so the agent shot him in "self-defense." His family says that is not true. His son said his dad was simply on his way to work, picking up his crew, when agents boxed him in. And ICE wasn't even looking for him — agents were hunting a different white van. Salgado Araujo was not their target at all.

Here's the part ICE doesn't want to talk about: the Harris County medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. Not an accident. A killing.

A young dad in Maine

Six days later, on July 13, 2026, it happened again — this time almost 2,000 miles away. Around 7 in the morning, an ICE agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old man from Colombia, at an intersection in Biddeford, Maine. He was married with a 3-year-old daughter, and was legally authorized to work in the U.S. To support his family, he worked two jobs — cleaning a veterinary clinic in the mornings and delivering food the rest of the day. Just days before he was killed, he posted photos of his little girl on Facebook: "3 years later. I love you my beautiful princess."

And once again, he was not the person ICE was after. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin admitted to Maine Senator Angus King that Guerrero was "NOT the target of the warrant" they were trying to serve. Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree put it plainly: "they perhaps shot the wrong person, that it was not the person they were going after."

ICE's excuse? They claimed the man "weaponized" his vehicle by trying to flee a traffic stop. The agents weren't wearing body cameras, so there is no footage from them to check their story against. But surveillance video from the scene showed Guerrero's white sedan drifting through the intersection as if he had lost control, before an unmarked SUV rammed it to a stop and agents pulled his lifeless body from the driver's seat. His windshield had at least four bullet holes. Even Maine's Republican Senator, Susan Collins, said she had urged DHS to halt all non-urgent vehicle stops in the state after the killing — and within a day, ICE reportedly suspended most vehicle stops nationwide.

Guerrero's death drew condemnation all the way from Colombia. President Gustavo Petro called it "the murder of a Colombian, a Latin American, at the hands of the U.S. government," writing that agents "killed him for believing him to be an inferior being without rights." His father, Omar Durán, described a hardworking son who checked in routinely with immigration authorities: "He had a lot of dreams to achieve. He loved his family so much. I don't know why they did this to him."

They always lie about it

Look at the pattern. In both killings, ICE told the same kind of story: the dead man was dangerous, the agent had no choice, it was self-defense. And in both, the people who were actually there — families, neighbors, even members of Congress — say that story falls apart the moment you look at it.

This is not new. Back in January, an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, as she tried to drive away. The government then put out a false account and tried to gaslight the public about what really happened. It's a routine now: ICE kills someone, blames the victim, and hopes the rest of us don't look too closely.

The problem for them is that we are looking. Ordinary people are filming these encounters on their phones and posting the videos online. A site called You Are Being Lied 2 gathers those posts in one place, so anyone can see for themselves the gap between what ICE claims and what actually happened. When you can watch it with your own eyes, the "self-defense" story stops working.

An agency that answers to no one

None of this happens by accident. This is what ICE was built to be — a masked, unaccountable federal police force that operates in near-total anonymity and rarely faces any consequences when it kills. No body cameras. No names released. No charges. Just a press statement blaming the person they shot. And Houston and Maine are not isolated: since the start of last year, federal immigration agents have shot more than 20 people, most of them inside a vehicle — a practice police departments across the country discourage precisely because a driver shot behind the wheel turns the car into an unguided weapon.

And here's the part that should make every one of us angry: our elected Republicans in Congress gave ICE the money to do this, cheered the agency on, and then went quiet when it started killing innocent people — including U.S. citizens. The same politicians who say we need guns to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government have nothing to say when government agents gun down unarmed people in the street. Two men dead in one week, neither of them the target, and from most of them: silence.

The bottom line

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was going to work. The man in Maine was a young father with a work permit. Renee Good was a mom trying to drive home. None of them were who ICE said they were after. All of them are dead. And every time, the government's first move is to lie about it.

If ICE can kill people this easily and lie about it this openly, then no one is safe — citizen or not. We deserve better.

Source

Berenice Garcia and Alejandro Serrano, "ICE agent fatally shoots migrant in Houston," The Texas Tribune, July 7, 2026 (photo: Reuters); "Man fatally shot by ICE in Maine was not intended target of warrant, lawmakers say," CBS News, July 13, 2026; Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Sabrina Shankman, and Lea Skene, "ICE Maine shooting victim is Joan Sebastian Guerrero from Colombia," The Boston Globe, July 14, 2026; and Jeanine Santucci and Christopher Cann, "Maine ICE shooting: Joan Sebastian Guerrero ID'd as 26-year-old killed," USA TODAY, July 14, 2026.