HOUSTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor says tests on “a white crystal-like substance” found inside the van of a man shot to death by immigration officers in Houston last month showed the material was not methamphetamine.
U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz confirmed the tests were negative for meth in a statement to The Texas Tribune, the news organization reported Thursday.
Reitz did not say what the substance actually was, but an attorney for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s family has said it was a homemade electrolyte mixture that Salgado Araujo and his construction crew used to stay hydrated in the grueling summer heat.
Salgado Araujo, 52, was killed July 7 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in unmarked vehicles chased his white work van through the streets of Houston, then shot him through the window. He had been driving his work crew, including his brother, to a construction site.
Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who lived without legal status in the U.S. for 35 years, ran a homebuilding business and had never been in trouble with the law.
His death is one of at least 10 during immigration enforcement operations since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, sparking protests in Houston and calls for an independent investigation.
Shortly after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said Salgado Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” and that the officer had fired in self-defense. The FBI then executed a search warrant on the van, alleging that officers saw several small bags inside filled with a substance that appeared to be methamphetamine.
But the two men who were riding with Salgado Araujo wrote in statements submitted in court that the ICE officers were never in danger of being run over, and in fact were always to the side of the van, never in front of or behind it.
Reitz revealed last month that the ICE officers were targeting two Guatemalan men who were potentially subject to deportation and who were driving a van that was similar to the one Salgado Araujo was driving the day he was killed.
David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas which is representing the Salgado family, said the FBI search warrant was part of a government attempt to create a “false narrative.”
“Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should still be alive today, and nothing about the government’s so-called ‘search’ could have changed that fact. That search proved what the Salgado family had said all along: Lorenzo was a hardworking man who made homes for Houston families, and his wife packed him homemade electrolyte mixes to keep him and his crew hydrated under the Texas sun,” Donatti said.
“By taking the unusual steps of securing and then unsealing their search warrant, the government has demonstrated that it is more interested in creating a false narrative than in seeking the truth,” he said.
“The Salgados deserve real answers about what happened to their father,” he said.