Editor’s note: In recent shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the federal government has withheld the names of the officers involved. This is a departure from the practice of many law enforcement agencies — including Texas’ biggest police departments — and contradicts advice the federal government has reportedly given local agencies in the past.
Today, we are publishing the name of the officer who allegedly shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston this summer. In recent weeks, local law enforcement and members of Congress have said their questions about the shooting have not been answered. We are publishing because we believe transparency in the case is of vital public interest as investigators, lawmakers and the public seek to understand what happened and how ICE operates more broadly in this state.
The federal immigration agent who witnesses say fired through an open van window and killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston nearly three months ago has been identified to The Texas Tribune as Gregory Feathers by an official familiar with the investigation who is not authorized to speak publicly. His role in the shooting is also corroborated by records, some of which were publicly released.
Feathers was rehired within the past two years after previously retiring, according to two people with knowledge of his employment history, overlapping with the second Trump administration’s aggressive recruitment of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to help meet its ambitious deportation goals. Feathers’ name was included in a Form I-213, which is akin to a police report and details ICE agents’ description of the chase and shooting incident. The form, which is not typically public, was mistakenly released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office last month. Other records obtained by the Tribune identify Feathers as calling paramedics and name him as one of two arresting agents involved in the deadly pursuit. The front seat passenger in Salgado Araujo’s van identified the shooter to the Tribune from a photograph which was separately confirmed to be Feathers by the official familiar with the investigation.
Feathers has not been charged with a crime and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has defended the shooting as an act of self-defense. But the local district attorney appears to be currently empaneling a grand jury that could result in criminal charges for Feathers, who through his attorney declined to comment. The lawyer, Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, said that DHS policy prevents her client from speaking during a pending investigation. She also declined to comment.
The district attorney’s investigation is being assisted by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and DHS are separately probing the incident.
[…]
Other immigration agents who killed people in the line of duty in recent months have been identified by news organizations, including ProPublica and the New York Times. There has been no public indication that any of them were subjected to violence afterward.
During Trump’s second administration, immigration agents, who often are masked, have shot at least two dozen people in the past two years — at least six, including three U.S. citizens, have died. Many of the shootings involved agents firing at people in moving vehicles, which law enforcement experts said is typically prohibited or discouraged by local police. The growing tally of deaths at the hands of anonymous federal agents has ignited outcries by Democrats, the victims’ relatives and residents to identify them.
Three of those killed were in Texas: An American citizen in South Padre Island and a Mexican immigrant who crossed the Rio Grande into Starr County, in addition to Salgado Araujo. Earlier this month, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man with a deportation order was shot in the back in Austin by a masked ICE agent, who also has not been identified. He is still alive but seriously injured and remains detained, according to his attorney. Federal officials claimed those shootings were in self-defense, as they have also maintained in the other cases.
[…]
Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor, who was in the front passenger seat of the van on the day of the deadly pursuit, identified the shooter in a photo to the Tribune. He told his lawyer, in a transcript she provided to the Tribune with his permission, that the agent fired through his window while on foot, striking his brother in the stomach. He and the two other passengers have said in previous interviews that they had no idea that it was immigration agents pursuing them because the officers were in unmarked black SUVs. The brother did not know the shooter’s name.
“The bullet passed right in front of me,” he said in his first public comments since being released from ICE detention last month. It caused his ears to ring for hours after agents threw him on the ground, injuring his knee, he said, while he heard his brother scream, “they have already killed me.”
There’s a lot more, so read the rest. I don’t have any particular point to make, I’m just very curious to see what happens next. I don’t know if this will affect Sean Teare’s investigation. This could go so many different ways.
On a different note:
Federal prosecutors have charged the Austin man an ICE agent shot earlier this month with a single count of resisting and assaulting a federal officer, according to court documents.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan national, was shot by an ICE officer in Austin on Sept. 20. He was taken to Dell Seton Medical Center, where he was released and taken into ICE custody three hours later with the bullet remaining in his back. He had been held at a detention center in Pearsall.
Garces Perez appeared before a federal court in Austin on Tuesday morning to be formally charged. Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, his lead attorney, said she saw him at the courthouse and he “was clearly very confused and distraught. He was in a lot of pain. He had not been given pain medication and he did not understand what was happening.”
In a sworn affidavit, federal prosecutors say that Garces Perez was first pulled over by ICE officers after they had observed him exiting a restaurant and identified him as having a final order of removal.
The officers identified themselves as immigration agents and Garces Perez handed them his Texas driver license, the court documents say. One officer was wearing a body worn camera that captured the incident. The other officer, the one that eventually shot Garces Perez, was not wearing a camera.
According to Garces Perez’s statement to investigators, he knew that he would be detained, so he asked to park in a different location. The officers and Garces Perez give conflicting statements over when emergency lights were activated and if the officers struck Garces Perez’s vehicle.
Garces Perez disregarded the officers’ commands to exit the vehicle and he fled the scene. As he pulled away from the scene, his driver’s side mirror hit one of the officers in the torso, according to the criminal complaint.
After a brief vehicle chase, one ICE officer claims that Garces Perez attempted to strike him with his car, which is when the officer, standing outside the vehicle, shot into the car and struck Garces Perez in the back.
Garces Perez is now in custody of the U.S. Marshals and has been taken for a medical review, according to Lincoln-Goldfinch. She said she has received no updates about his medical status or location.
“There’s a lot moving very quickly and this is because the government has refused to cooperate and inform the other side which is, in my experience, not a professional way to litigate,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “We believe that the government is playing games with Wilber’s life … we still have concerns about sepsis and long-term immobility, and that is backed up by medical professionals.”
For screamingly obvious reasons, no one should believe a word of what ICE and DHS says here. The track record says that this case is much more likely to fall apart than to result in a felony conviction. We will know much more when this makes it to a hearing and when the defense receives discovery materials.