The murder of yet another nonviolent, decent, hardworking American at the hands of ICE thugs operating under the banner of federal immigration law should be grounds for national outrage and termination of all Trump officials involved in the perpetuation of a rogue operation. This is especially the case when agents of that operation kill with impunity and then resort to easily debunked lies to cover their tracks.
As the New York Times recounted, the inexcusable killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a hardworking, fifty-two-year old small businessman and devoted family man who had been a resident of the United States for thirty-five years — followed a familiar, loathsome pattern: A violent encounter with an unarmed Hispanic member of the community, a rush to demonize the victim, and subsequent lies that he “weaponized his vehicle.”
As we have heard in so many similar situations, ICE falsely claims the suspect “tried to run over an agent, who then fired at him.” That was a shameful pack of lies. A Homeland Security Department spokesman later fessed up that Araujo was not the intended target of the agents. As attested by Araujo’s brother and two other men in the car, they were on their way to a construction site and did not “use his vehicle as a weapon or attempt to run over the immigration officers.”
From start to finish, ICE has been in cover-up mode— body cameras were conveniently off, agents removed Araujo’s phone and wallet when he was in the ambulance (resulting in his admission as a John Doe), and DHS reportedly pressured witnesses in the vehicle to self-deport. “ICE has a pattern of lying. It is disgusting and cruel,” Rep. Pamila Jayapal (D-WA) said succinctly.
The only thing “weaponized” here is a federal agency that has an unmatched record of mayhem and violence. “Since last year, federal agents have fired on at least 21 people, many of whom were shot in their vehicles. Five people, including three U.S. citizens, were killed as a result,” the Times noted. While ICE repeatedly claims its agents were attacked with vehicles, these claims have evaporated in court.
While the agents directly involved, the ICE supervisors, and the reprehensible Trump lackey Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin have moral and political responsibility for what can only be described as a government-sanctioned killing, they are not the only ones with blood on their hands. Every Republican in the House and Senate who voted to dump more funds into an unreformed and unaccountable operation (most recently adding $70 billion to ICE and Customs and Border Protection via reconciliation) owns the death, trauma, and terror that ensued.
While Democrats do not currently control either house of Congress, they are not without immediate recourse. Harris County District Attorney’s Office Sean Teare told Houston Public Media on Thursday, “We’re going to look at every avenue, and if a state crime was committed, be it a murder, be it a manslaughter, be it tampering with evidence, we are going to investigate it.” He added that “if someone committed that crime, you don’t get to hide behind a badge.”
Democrats must proceed on multiple fronts. Every Democrat on the ballot must hold every Republican incumbent responsible for funding and enabling gross human rights violations. Just Monday, there was another reported ICE killing of a Colombian man (who was legally authorized to work in the U.S.), this time in Maine. Such atrocities underscore the need to hold Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who voted to continue to fund the deportation killing machine, wholly responsible for the spate of inexcusable deaths.
Meanwhile, as in the case of the victims of Trump’s extrajudicial killings on the high seas in the Caribbean, international law has a role to play as well. Mexican officials announced two days after Araujo’s murder that they would file criminal complaints “over the deaths of several Mexican nationals during immigration operations, in the nation’s most confrontational protest yet against President Trump’s immigration policies,” according to the New York Times. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum declared, “We cannot allow our brothers and sisters in the United States to be mistreated,” a sentiment that other countries whose nationals are similarly abused can certainly adopt. Given that the U.S. is fast becoming an international pariah for its conduct, international diplomatic and/or economic pressure may finally bring some accountability to the Trump regime.
However, domestic political pressure is the ultimate remedy for these killing sprees and the intolerable reign of terror directed primarily at brown and black people whom the Trump white supremacists want to racially cleanse from our country. (In case you had any doubt about the racist intentions of the Trump regime, thousands of Haitians in Ohio, Somalian immigrants in Minnesota, and Syrian refugees in Chicago are just some of the migrants facing complete disruption of their lives, loss of employment, and fear of deportation to centers characterized by life-threatening conditions.)
Democrats must vow to end all funding to ICE and CBP in their current incarnation and commit to comprehensive, exacting oversight to determine liability at all levels for this epidemic of death, abuse, and lawlessness (with an eye toward criminal referral to states and, once a Democratic administration is in power, federal authorities).
Democrats need no longer tiptoe around the only sensible long-term solution: Abolish ICE and CBP, redesign interior enforcement to end dragnets and gross violations of civil liberties, and reform our legal immigration system from top to bottom. The latter must entail an effort to regularize asylum claims, swiftly work through the backlog of cases, legalize long-term residents who have committed no crimes and have been productive members of the community (removing the cloud of fear that hangs over families such as the Araujos), and rebuild/rationalize our legal immigration system.
As Jayapal put it, “[I]t doesn’t matter what you want to call it, but we have to disband ICE. We have to melt ICE. We have to abolish ICE.” She added: “Whatever word you want to use, what we need to get to is the end-result: ICE should not exist as it exists. And DHS should not exist as it exists.” Every Democrat should be as definitive and matter-of-fact.
The weaponization that Americans face does not come from mythical “car ramming” by immigrants. The weaponization of federal forces against innocent people — a weaponization we should deplore — stems from Trump’s campaign of nonstop lies and racist smears to sow fear and malicious incitement of violence against non-white immigrants. It stems from an atmosphere of impunity among federal forces who have been unleashed to terrorize fellow Americans with consequences, who are tearing apart the fabric of American life and making a mockery of the rule of law. James Talarico, Democratic Senate nominee, spoke movingly of the murder of a Texan “neighbor,” a man “who embodied the American dream.” Every elected official must decide either to enable or dismantle the despicable system that enabled this, and voters must hold them responsible for their choice.
Fortunately for the future of pluralistic democracy and the decency of American society, voters — who months ago showed majority support for abolishing ICE — are ahead of the politicians. The upcoming midterms will allow them to reject the status quo. We should not wait for future instances of murder and mayhem to push politicians to end the reign of terror that has turned American cities into killing zones and our legal system into a nightmare.
Every one of Trump's brain-dead supporters who cheered when he called immigrants "vermin" and screamed that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Springfield is responsible for these murders.
They may not have pulled the trigger or driven the unmarked get-away white vans, or barked incomprehensible orders to terrified people just trying to make an honest living, but they are still responsible nonetheless. These regularized murders were both predictable -- and predicted.
The murder of innocent civilians is a disgrace. An even bigger disgrace is the number of Americans who find this acceptable.