A federal judge in Texas on Monday temporarily barred immigration officials from deporting a witness in the fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison issued an order blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego without first obtaining the judge's permission and barred ICE from transferring him outside the Southern District of Texas without prior approval.
The order followed a petition filed by an attorney for Rojas Pliego seeking his release from immigration detention; the petition, filed on Monday, says he is detained in the Montgomery ICE Processing Center in Conroe, north of Houston.
The petition says Rojas Pliego is a Mexican citizen who has lived in the United States since 1998 and has no criminal record, and that he is in a common-law marriage with a U.S. citizen with whom he has three children and four stepchildren who are U.S. citizens.
Rojas Pliego is one of three construction workers who were inside the work van Salgado Araujo was driving when he was shot and killed, and the two other passengers — Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo — have filed similar petitions seeking release from ICE detention.
The petition for Tirado Pantoja says he came to the United States in 1996 has no criminal history and is in a common-law marriage with a legal permanent resident and has a son and a stepdaughter who are U.S. citizens, and Ruby Powers, an attorney representing Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, asked a judge to keep her client's petition sealed because she fears retaliation or intimidation.
Federal and local officials have produced competing accounts: the FBI submitted an affidavit disclosing photos that an agent said indicated methamphetamine may have been inside the work van, a claim Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare has disputed, and the Department of Homeland Security said one of its agents shot Salgado Araujo in self-defense and that ICE agents were looking for a different person when they stopped the vehicle.
Teare said he submitted paperwork to help the three witnesses detained by ICE obtain U visas and that his office is investigating the July 7 shooting; he said he is "more than prepared" to file charges against immigration agents "if the case and the evidence directs us that criminal wrongdoing occurred," and Ruby Powers said the material in question was likely salt used in a homemade electrolyte mix to brave the summer heat.