One of the three key witnesses in the operation in which a federal agent fatally shot immigrant Lorenzo Salgado in Houston, Texas, was released this Wednesday afternoon after 22 days of confinement in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, his immigration lawyer reported.
“José has been reunited with his family,” wrote lawyer Hugo Balderas-Ibarra on his Instagram account referring to José Trinidad Rojas, 51 years old. A federal judge gave ICE 48 hours on Monday to release him, considering that his detention could be violating his constitutional rights.
Rojas was one of the three passengers who on July 7 were on their way to work in Lorenzo Salgado’s van along with the victim’s brother, Víctor Salgado, 44, and Daniel Tirado Pantoja, 43.
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The testimonies of these three Mexicans are key to understanding the sequence of events that led ICE agents to shoot Salgado Araujo, although he was not the target of the operation they were in. Their versions, denounced lawyer Hugo Balderas-Ibarra and Texas congresswoman Sylvia García in recent days, differ from those shared by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the media.
In sworn statements and later cited in a press conference on Friday, the immigrants denied that any of the agents had been in danger of being run over by the van and assured that their shots were fired from the sides of the vehicle. Official verification of the facts is complicated because, according to Democratic congresswoman García, the ICE officials involved in the operation were not wearing body cameras nor did their vehicles have them. That is why these three men are fundamental in the investigation.
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