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“I've never experienced anything like this in my entire life,” said Reid Rasner, who’s running for Wyoming’s sole House seat.

Big developments on the immigration front: First, ICE killed a 52-year-old undocumented immigrant in Texas this week. ICE’s account was already suspect. But now a representative for the man’s family says that the three other men driving with him—who are likely witnesses to the killing—are getting pressured to self-deport in a potential effort to silence them. That’s utterly damning. Second, Politico reports that a key piece of Trump’s deportation agenda—detentions without bond—has now lost in court a staggering 15,000 times. And get this: A majority of Trump-appointed judges who have considered the policy have rejected it. These things are related: The mounting lawlessness on many fronts is alienating even Trump judges. We talked to New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant, author of a good piece on the Texas shooting. We discuss why it’s essential to focus on this one killing, why Trump judges turning against him constitutes a vulnerability for his agenda, and why the American people can’t get complacent, now that he’s trying to deport huge numbers a lot more quietly. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Changes to the EU’s migration framework raise human rights concerns, allowing biometric data collection from children and migrant detention in "return hubs." Ana Vračar , July 9, 2026

On Tuesday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant and three-decade Houston resident. It was the second ICE-involved shooting this week alone; since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least 10 people. Now, as hundreds march in […]

ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Texas on Tuesday morning. The agents stated that Salgado Araujo ignored verbal instructions and tried to ram their vehicle. Newly obtained footage puts a massive asterisk over those claims of self-defense.Surveillance video footage obtained by local outlet KHOU 11 shows the agents using their unmarked black SUV in an attempt to box in Salgado Araujo—initiating the conflict. Salgado Araujo makes a U-turn and heads in the other direction, and the agents then turn around to follow him.While the video did not capture the final moments of the shooting, separate footage showed no damage to the ICE vehicle, again weakening federal agents’ claim that Salgado Araujo tried to ram them.Video shows the moments before ICE shot a worker who lived for 35 years in the United States. It appears to show it was ICE attempting to initiate contact with his vehicle, not the worker attempting to "ram" ICE agents pic.twitter.com/Rv8KsHPf8J— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) July 9, 2026This discrepancy between the agents’ statements and the video footage has led to widespread calls for an independent investigation into Salgado Araujo’s death. Complicating that is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security detained the three other immigrant men in the car with Salgado Araujo—one of whom is Salgado Araujo’s brother—and is pressuring them to self-deport, preventing them from serving as witnesses.“What we have heard … is that they’re being told to sign voluntary departures. They’re being told to cooperate with the version [of events] that ICE has released,” Immigrant Families and Students in the Fight head Cesar Espinosa told Democracy Now! on Thursday. “Threatening them that they’re going to file charges if they don’t, or that they’re going to be deported expeditiously. And what we fear is that this is another effort from ICE to cover up something that they did very, very wrong.”ICE also arrested and detained witnesses after the killing of Alex Pretti in January. And this isn’t the first time it’s offered this version of events, either. When Marimar Martinez was shot five times in her car last year, ICE initially claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.” Bodycam footage showed no such thing, and her charges were dismissed.“They are being approached by unmarked vehicles. These vehicles, many times, often, start ramming vehicles, trying to get them to stop. And when people jump out, they’re not wearing insignia saying ‘federal agents’ or ‘ICE’ or a badge. They’re wearing, a lot of the times, plain clothing with vests that just say ‘police,’” Espinosa continued. “So, I cannot imagine the fear that a lot of people feel when they are being persecuted by somebody that’s unknown. And I ask people, you know, put yourself in these folks’ shoes and ask yourself: How would you react?”Salgado Araujo, a father of three U.S. citizens, had been in the United States for almost 35 years.

Mexico is taking legal action over ICE agents killing an immigrant in North Houston on Tuesday.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Thursday that her government planned to file criminal complaints in the United States over all Mexican citizens who have been killed while being targeted by ICE. Fourteen Mexican nationals have died in ICE custody, while three have been killed in immigration enforcement operations, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on Tuesday. “We cannot turn a blind eye to ​the Mexicans who have died,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference. She said the purpose of the complaints was to bring accountability to anyone accused of a homicide or of committing human rights violations.The Mexican government provides help to all of its citizens who ask for it, but “especially to Mexicans whose only crime is working honestly ​in the United States,” Sheinbaum added.The Department of Homeland Security claims Salgado Araujo, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, was killed after he didn’t comply with orders from ICE agents, and then “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” It’s a similar excuse to the ones DHS used for the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago last year and the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis in January.In both of those cases, video footage showed that neither Martinez nor Good tried to use their cars against ICE agents. The DHS has not provided any evidence to back up its claim in Salgado Araujo’s case, and has even pressured witnesses to “self-deport,” The New Republic found.Salgado Araujo’s U.S. citizen son Ronaldo discovered his father’s death through social media, and not from the government or medical professionals.“I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot. I recognized him immediately,” Ronaldo said, his voice breaking. “Not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out.”Hopefully, the Salgado Araujo family will get justice, and hopefully so will the families of Martinez, Good, and Alex Pretti.

A medida que los tribunales de inmigración aceleran los procedimientos de deportación, la administración Trump retiene fondos y, al mismo tiempo, presiona a las organizaciones de asistencia legal para que revelen datos confidenciales sobre niños vulnerables.

On Tuesday morning in Houston, an ICE agent shot and killed a man on his way to work. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo had lived in the United States for nearly 35 years. With him that morning were his brother and two men who worked on Salgado Araujo’s construction crew. At the time of his death, Salgado Araujo was waiting on a work permit; according to his son, “he was close to obtaining his legal status.” When ICE detained the men, the agents were reportedly driving an unmarked vehicle, as has been their practice in raids across the U.S. since early 2025. His son said that Salgado Araujo likely feared for his life—as countless others have when ICE agents have followed them, approached their cars, smashed their windows, and dragged them out into the street. “This is not an isolated event across the nation,” said Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “We have seen a pattern of ICE involvement in shootings and excessive use of force. Each time, a family is left without answers and a community is left in fear.” The group has called for a “full, independent, and transparent investigation” into Salgado Araujo’s killing.For ICE’s mission of mass deportations, controlling the narrative is as critical as filling detention centers at record rates. The hospital where Salgado Araujo was taken would not tell his son Ronaldo Salgado what happened to his father, nor would law enforcement, he said at a press conference Wednesday. Instead, he learned that his father had died from a video he saw on social media, he said. He recognized his father by his voice. Predictably, the Department of Homeland Security told reporters that the killing was an act of “self-defense” by ICE agents who had feared for their safety. This is a story they have told many times before. Since Trump returned to office, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is the tenth person federal immigration agents have shot and killed.After Trump ordered mass deportations and officers with ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and other federal agencies descended on and occupied neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, among other cities, their showy, high-profile operations and violent arrests drew fierce public opposition. Residents put themselves in the way of ICE, defended their immigrant neighbors, and organized to shut down detention camps. In January, when immigration officers killed two Minneapolis residents in the street, surrounded by witnesses, officials claimed they were dangerous terrorists. Their lies did not succeed; the public grief and anger did not abate. Apparently to signal that things had changed, the man who had been mass deportation’s most brutal face, Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino, disappeared from the front lines. In March, Trump replaced DHS head Kristi Noem with Markwayne Mullen. With these personnel shifts, the administration was perhaps trying to indicate a new approach. But it was doing so without any acknowledgment that it had done anything wrong. If the withdrawal marked a shift in public relations, it did not, importantly, mark a shift in enforcement. Indeed, the violence resulting from those operations may be escalating: ICE shootings and killings in 2026 are already outpacing those in 2025. And mass deportation operations have expanded: In five days this June, federal immigration agents reportedly arrested 10,000 people—doubling their usual daily rate of arrests. They are still terrorizing neighborhoods: A recent raid in Virginia Beach involved agents chasing people through backyards, “searching everywhere,” from boats to trash bins, one resident said. They just aren’t marketing it as they once were.Mass arrests lead to more killings, not only in the streets but also in detention camps. During this Trump administration, more than 50 people have died while in ICE custody, research by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights has found. “The mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since Trump’s second term began,” their report stated. At the same time, these may be undercounts: DHS has lagged behind on reporting detention data and no longer reports deaths of those recently released. The lack of transparency is systemic, leaving the work of investigating anti-immigration operations, from detention centers to deportation flights, to nongovernmental organizations and neighbors. So far, since the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston this week, federal law enforcement has shut out the Harris County District Attorney’s Office from the federal investigation, with “access to key evidence” under “federal control,” according to the district attorney’s spokesperson. Past investigations, meanwhile, have proved somewhat meaningless; before getting the results of 16 federal investigations into fatal and nonfatal shooting by DHS officers, the Trump administration declared the shootings were justified. These include incidents where video evidence is ample and public, such as in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year. When it comes to Salgado Araujo, whose killing was already on social media before members of his family had been officially informed of his death, the narrative set by DHS in the immediate aftermath will likely be what the administration hews to, even when thoroughly challenged by the evidence.As of Thursday, the three surviving witnesses to the shooting, Salgado Araujo’s co-workers, were still in immigration detention, under pressure from officials, as my colleague Greg Sargent reported. “These men hold the key to what actually happened,” said Juan Proaño, a representative for the families and CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Now, Proaño said, they’ve learned from the men’s families that officials are trying to get them to leave the country, through what the administration euphemizes as “self-deportation,” apparently before they could say anything that might challenge the DHS narrative.Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s story, however, is available to us. “That’s how I want the world to know my father, not as someone who got shot and killed,” his son Ronaldo told reporters. “He worked for thirty years building homes in the Houston suburbs.” After working on hundreds of homes for others, he dreamed of building one for his own family—“one he could call our home, and he did.” In the evenings, after work, “that’s where you could find him,” Ronaldo said, “resting on his porch, listening to music, petting his dog.” Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, he said, “did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of Mexican man shot and killed by ICE.”Joining the local calls for a full investigation were Representatives Sylvia Garcia and Christian Menefee. “What other profession has the power to take somebody’s life in the middle of a street,” Menefee said, “and meanwhile, our administration is in court fighting to make sure people like Ronaldo and Lorenzo Jr. can’t be citizens in this country?” This is the Trump administration’s ethos in a nutshell: The lives of people who aren’t worthy of citizenship have no value. When ICE kills someone, when the administration rewrites the truth to exonerate the killers, that drive to dehumanize cannot be covered up.