A substance found in Lorenzo Salgado Araujo‘s van last week was not methamphetamine, multiple officials said Friday afternoon.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said she could confirm “the substance found in Lorenzo Salgado’s van was not a narcotic or any other illicit substance” in a statement posted on social media.
“As his family has said all along, this was an electrolyte powder to stay hydrated working outside in the hot Texas summer,” Garcia wrote. “The attempt to cast a shadow over Lorenzo Salgado’s name has failed.”
A spokesperson for Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare’s office said it had been notified that the contents of the plastic baggies were negative for narcotics or other illicit drugs. The spokesperson declined to comment on other details about the findings, including what agency notified Teare’s office.
A lawyer for Victor Salgado Araujo, a witness to the shooting and Lorenzo Salgado’s brother, said that the Texas Department of Public Safety conducted testing on the substance and that official results were expected to be announced Monday.
“The preliminary report is already clear: the substance was not a controlled substance,” attorney Ruby Powers said.
[…]
The Justice Department last week unsealed a search warrant that showed FBI agents sought a judge’s permission to seize and test small plastic baggies that were sitting on the dashboard and floor of Salgado’s Ford Transit van. An agent wrote in a search warrant that the baggies appeared to contain a white, crystal-like substance that was consistent with methamphetamine.
The warrant was unusual for its public release. Most warrants filed in the Southern District of Texas remain sealed during ongoing investigations where there has been no indictment.
Critics of the Justice Department claimed the release was an attempt to smear Salgado’s name in the aftermath of the shooting. The day after the warrant became public his family said they believed the substance in the baggies was salt that was used in homemade electrolyte mixture.
“An unproven claim was allowed to circulate before it was tested, and the way it was made public did real damage, diverting attention from what actually matters in this case,” Powers said. “Lorenzo was shot, and no lab report answers for that.”
See here for all previous blogging on this topic. I wrote about this specific thing somewhere in there, but as I mostly have to do roundups because there’s so many stories, I didn’t look for the specific post. But look, ICE has lied about everything, so there’s not that much to be said here beyond restating that plain fact.
Here’s more on the hearing on Friday about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and the current state of ICE.
Democratic members of Houston’s Congressional delegation called for a major overhaul of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics and cautioned that immigrants are being “hunted down” during an oversight forum Friday.
The panel was spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, in the aftermath of the July 7 fatal shooting by ICE agents of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant and small business owner from Houston’s East End.
Garcia was joined by Houston Democrats Lizzie Fletcher, Al Green and Christian Menefee; U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio; U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, and U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-NY, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, among others.
[…]
[Harris County District Attorney Sean] Teare criticized the continued detention of three witnesses to the July 7 shooting — Salgado’s brother and two workers who rode in the van.
“They’re the only witnesses we have,” Teare said.
Already, Teare’s investigators have interviewed one of the work van’s occupants.
He cautioned that further interviews are not conducive to privacy amid a guarded investigation. The witnesses may not speak freely while in immigration detention as the rooms are not intended for privileged conversations with lawyers — unlike at the Harris County Jail, which has rooms for defendants to speak with their attorneys without being recorded by authorities.
“We don’t know who’s listening when they give witness statements,” Teare testified.
Teare told lawmakers that he has repeatedly reached out to the DHS to no avail.
“We haven’t gotten a response to anything,” Teare said.
[…]
Aside from the Salgado case, Teare said ICE’s street tactics are hindering his office’s ability to investigate major crimes in Harris County.
“Those of us in law enforcement don’t take issue with deporting violent felons. However, here in Harris County, there are crimes and cases my office has not been able to prosecute because witnesses are scared of immigration consequences,” he said.
Teare added that a witness in an unrelated capital murder case was on a plane to Central America before his office was able to intervene and keep the person in Texas. Teare declined to tell lawmakers which case that was, but in the past, the district attorney has publicly said the father of an 11-year-old Pasadena girl who was raped and killed in 2023 was deported to El Salvador following his misdemeanor arrest. Teare’s office intervened to bring the father back to Texas as a material witness for the accused assailant’s death penalty trial.
Teare said the uncertainty has had a significant impact on the office’s ability to investigate cases of domestic violence.
“They refuse to come forward or testify for fear of being deported,” he said. “What’s happening isn’t helping public safety. It’s certainly not justice. And it’s un-American.”
[…]
Castro later piled on.
“They said that (Salgado) was not their target. That’s because everyone is their target,” he said. “Everyone who is brown, who is speaking Spanish in public. Donald Trump’s campaign of mass deportation is an assault on the Hispanic community in the United States of America.”
Castro then took aim at the governor’s office for demanding local authorities work with ICE.
“Let us also remember that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is a full partner in that brutality,” he said. “We see it on the streets and behind the prison walls of places like Dilly and Pearsall and Karnes in those detention centers. Gov. Abbott has forced state and local law enforcement to assist ICE despite its reckless brutality. No identification, no warrants, full masks and guns drawn.”
Amen to that. Greg Abbott and the rest of the Republican state leadership co-own all of this. We need to harp on that every chance we get, and from there make the point that they own everything that’s wrong in Texas right now because they’ve been in charge for 25+ years. There’s a story about the hearing from Friday morning here if you want more.
And the Republicans who aren’t in office but would like to be are not and will not be any better.
If she wins her race in November, GOP congressional nominee Alex Mealer will represent Houston’s Magnolia Park, the site where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent earlier this month, potentially bringing the area under different partisan representation mere months after it took center stage in the nation’s immigration debate.
In an interview this week, Mealer addressed the shooting in detail for the first time, expressing full confidence that ongoing investigations by the Texas Department of Public Safety, FBI and Houston police will produce a “fulsome accounting” of what happened.
“Any time there’s a loss of life, that is obviously a profound tragedy,” Mealer said, adding that she has been in touch with the FBI’s Houston field office. She acknowledged “the one issue that I think everyone will agree upon” is the need to outfit agents with body cameras, which none of the officers were wearing.
But she otherwise preached patience to let authorities’ fact-finding unfold, drawing on her Army background to argue that incomplete information can distort early conclusions about incidents where someone is gunned down.
“I think we need to see what comes out of those [investigations], because from being in the military as well, things go wrong,” she said. “You look at something from one lens, you’re missing feedback. So, I support the calls for investigation. Speculating to me is not a helpful, productive path forward.”
Mealer’s comments about the July 7 shooting were her first since she posted on social media that same day, calling the incident “yet another reminder of the dangers law enforcement face” while voicing confidence that investigators would “ensure justice is served.” Her more circumspect approach stands in sharp contrast to the assertive response from U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the Democrat who currently represents much of Houston’s predominantly Hispanic East End, including Magnolia Park.
The neighborhood is among the East End territory being shifted into a new red-leaning seat, which Mealer hopes to represent, under the new congressional map approved by Texas Republicans last summer.
Garcia, a longtime and ardent critic of President Donald Trump’s border agenda, moved aggressively to fill the information vacuum in the days after the shooting, pressing federal officials for answers as Immigration and Customs Enforcement remained initially tight-lipped.
[…]
Asked what she would do differently if she was in Congress when the shooting occurred, Mealer said she hasn’t “heard a specific action item at this point that isn’t already happening” beyond the push for cameras. And she insisted that it would not be prudent to rush to judgment before the full picture emerges.
“With these issues, you want it to be based on facts that happened, not turned into partisan talking points,” she said. “Once we see the results of the investigation, then [we] can see — were there other safeguards, or was this just a tragedy?”
One of these people demands to know what happened and will work to make positive changes and hold the responsible parties to account. It ain’t Alex Mealer. I wish this story had at least named Leticia Gutierrez as Mealer’s opponent – one might get the impression Mealer is seeking to oust Rep. Garcia – but since it didn’t I will. Here’s the interview I did with Gutierrez for the primary if you need a reminder about her. This is a winnable race, if she can get enough resources to run it properly. See also this Chron editorial and this op-ed from Commissioner Adrian Garcia. The Trib and Houston Public Media have more.
The new federal prosecutor for the Southern District, Aaron Reitz, should prosecute or discipline the person within his office who leaked the grand jury subpoena in an attempt to smear Mr. Salgado.
Given that they are willing to cover for murderers, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.