Judge blocks ICE’s bid to quickly deport witnesses of fatal Houston shooting

A federal judge blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s attempt to hastily deport witnesses of a fatal shooting in Houston, according to reports Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued an order on Monday blocking the deportation of Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego and ordered ICE agents to keep him in the Southern District of Texas, CBS News reported. Pliego was a witness in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant killed by ICE agents earlier this month.

Salgado Araujo was fatally shot after ICE agents rammed his van, according to witnesses. Agents didn’t have body cameras on, and little video footage captured the events leading up to his death. However, Salgado Araujo was transporting three men in his van when he was killed, and their attorneys have denied ICE’s account of events.

According to reporting by the Texas Tribune, two of the passengers in the van said that two unmarked vehicles struck them from behind and the side before they stopped.

“Out of nowhere, they suddenly cornered us, and we told Lorenzo to stop the van,” Rojas Pliego wrote in his statement, per the Texas Tribune. “When Lorenzo stopped the van, the officer shot him anyway.”

Rojas Pliego added that it was “impossible to say that they were going to get run over. That’s a lie — no officer was behind nor in front — they were on the sides.”

The incident also came the same week that ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine, killed a Colombian immigrant. In both cases, the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, claimed that agents were acting in self-defense.