ICE must answer for July killings in Houston and Maine | Editorial
This editorial is jointly authored by the editorial boards of the Houston Chronicle and the Maine Trust for Local News.
The state of Maine and the city of Houston, Texas, have little in common. But today we find ourselves speaking in a united voice about the violence and chaos that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has brought to our respective corners of the country.
One month ago in Biddeford, Maine, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a father and food-delivery driver, was fatally shot by an ICE agent. Less than a week before that, in a chillingly similar moment of bloodshed, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and construction worker who had lived in Houston more than 30 years, was also killed by ICE.
Neither Durán Guerrero nor Salgado were formal targets of ICE investigations. Both were caught up in a deadly dragnet strategy that refuses to distinguish between dangerous criminals and hardworking immigrants. Both men were on their way to work.
In both shootings, ICE initially — and, it now seems, falsely — claimed that the men “weaponized” their vehicles.
In both shootings, ICE has failed to formally disclose the identity of the agents who killed Salgado and Durán Guerrero, to produce the weapons used in their deaths, or to release any other relevant information.
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In both shootings, Salgado and Durán Guerrero leave behind families who want to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones. Those families deserve justice.
Outrage over these killings shouldn’t be limited to Houston and Maine. All of the United States now faces an out-of-control federal immigration agency that acts as if it can kill without accountability.
Salgado’s sons made this connection when they testified at a congressional forum in Houston last month.
“We’re not the only family living this Kafkaesque nightmare,” Lorenzo Salgado Jr. said. “Shortly after our father was killed, a 3-year-old girl in Biddeford, Maine, watched federal agents shoot and kill her father.”
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE accepted the invitation to appear at that meeting (a similar forum will take place in Biddeford on Aug. 17 — the same invitations have not yet been accepted). So far, both agencies have refused to answer the American people’s questions about why two families are now missing their fathers.
In Maine, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s family is still waiting for investigators to return some of his belongings — which agency has custody of them, they do not know. As the weeks drag on, attorneys for the family, concerned about video evidence being overwritten, have sent preservation requests far and wide.
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What is ICE’s current use-of-force policy? What training do agents undergo? Why are agents targeting people who don’t have deportation orders? Why is the release of future body camera footage being left to the “discretion” of an agency that was uninterested in using them? What will it take to hold agents accountable for recklessly, needlessly and cruelly spilling blood in American streets?
We call on our congressional delegations to hold formal public hearings and force DHS and ICE to answer these questions and many more. We need leaders like Sens. Susan Collins, Angus King, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to speak in a single voice and demand transparency and accountability.
All Americans, from Houston to Maine, urgently need to be reassured that armed federal agents are not above the law. All of us know well that law enforcement should be accountable to the people. It is part of our nation’s founding, written into history that every American schoolchild learns — a story not from Houston or Maine, but Boston.
In the spring of 1770, in response to jeers, spitting and flying objects, a handful of British soldiers opened fire on an angry crowd of American patriots, killing five. Eight redcoats, arrested and charged with murder, were defended in court by John Adams. Two were ultimately convicted of manslaughter. The law, Adams told the court, “will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations and wanton tempers of men.”
Colonists under the rule of King George III could expect more transparency and more commitment to justice than Americans can expect under President Donald Trump.
Where are the arrests? Where is the trial? Where is the justice?
We cannot let these tragedies fade into mere headlines. If our representatives cannot insist on real accountability, voters need to elect new ones.
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Tagged: ICE, immigration
