On Tuesday, July 15, 2026, over 100 community members filled the council chamber at Houston City Hall, spilling into the hallways as they awaited their turn to address Mayor John Whitmire and the city council. The crowd’s chants of “Do your job! Do your job!” echoed through the building, united in demanding accountability for the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

Maria Cervantes, an immigrant from Mexico who grew up in Houston’s East End neighborhood where Salgado Araujo was shot, testified, “ICE hunts us like animals. I can’t help but think, who’s next? Am I going to get a bullet to the head for being brown?”

The mayor has not yet clarified whether the city will launch an independent investigation into the incident. ICE stated that Salgado Araujo was not the agency’s intended target.

Salgado Araujo’s death is part of a broader wave of immigration enforcement actions across the United States, which have included fatal encounters in Minnesota and a recent shooting in Maine that killed 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.

For Houston’s immigrant justice groups, the protest was a continuation of long-standing organizing efforts dating back before former President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. These efforts include outreach to day laborers and safety-planning with local businesses.

Local organizer Uncle Eagle of 50501 and the national No Kings coalition described the situation as “absolutely ridiculous,” but noted that it is “bringing the coalition together.”

Activists are also confronting the impact of the shooting on the East End, a historically Latino community. Esmeralda Ledezma, representing the immigrant justice nonprofit Woori Juntos, said, “The connection that I draw [from the shooting] is that our immigrant and Hispanic Latino communities are disposable. We built the community brick by brick, and it gets torn down and redeveloped over the sake of money.”

Organizers announced that canvassing efforts will continue in the East End and beyond, with protests planned every weekend and a larger mobilization scheduled around the city council’s evening session on July 28, 2026.