ICE Agents Shot and Killed Two Men Six Days Apart — a Houston Man on His Way to Work and a Colombian Food-Delivery Driver in Maine — Neither Was the Person They Were Looking For, Neither Agent Wore a Body Camera, and When ICE Paused Traffic Stops, Trump Ordered Them Resumed the Same Day

In the span of six days in July 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot two men — and in both cases, the man they killed was not the person they had come to arrest. On July 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, in Houston as he headed to work. On July 13, ICE officer David Brouillette shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian food-delivery driver, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. Neither man was the target of the operation. In both shootings, the agents were not wearing body cameras. Witnesses in the Maine case gave accounts "extremely different" from ICE's — saying no agent was ever in front of the vehicle and that shots came from the side of the van, contradicting the agency's report. Federal immigration agents have now killed at least four people this year, part of a documented pattern of escalating deadly force as arrests went quieter and more violent. Nationwide "ICE Out" protests erupted in Houston, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Columbia, and beyond. ICE announced it was pausing most traffic stops and expanding body-camera use — and then, on July 15, Trump issued a statement saying ICE "cannot give up" traffic stops, and vehicle stops were permitted to resume the same day. Separately, a New York Times review found that 213 of more than 400 resolved federal cases accusing people of assaulting or impeding ICE and Border Patrol agents had been dismissed, withdrawn, or ended in acquittals — collapsing the "agents under assault" narrative used to justify the aggression.

Two men are dead who were not the men ICE was looking for. That is the core fact, and everything else — the missing body cameras, the contradicted reports, the president overruling his own agency's safety pause within hours — radiates out from it.

Houston: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

On July 7, 2026, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Houston while on his way to work. He was not the person the agents had come to arrest. His family, through a lawyer, described a man killed in an operation that was never about him.

Maine: Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero

Six days later, on July 13, ICE officer David Brouillette shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national who worked as a food-delivery driver, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. He, too, was not the target of the enforcement operation.

Other people in the vehicle gave accounts that were, in CNN's words, "extremely different" from ICE's version: they said there was never an ICE agent in front of the vehicle, and that the shots came from the side of the van — directly contradicting the agency's claim that an officer fired because he was in the car's path. There was no body-camera footage to resolve the dispute, because —

The pattern: no cameras, wrong targets, rising body count

In both shootings, the agents were not wearing body cameras. There is no independent record of what happened, only the accounts of the officers who fired and the civilians who survived
In both shootings, the dead man was not the person ICE was seeking. These were not high-risk fugitive captures gone wrong; they were routine encounters that turned fatal
Federal immigration agents have killed at least four people this year. Reporting has documented that as ICE arrests grew quieter and less visible, they also grew more deadly

The pause — and the same-day reversal

Facing nationwide outrage, ICE announced it was pausing most traffic stops and moving to expand body-camera use — an implicit admission that the current practice was killing people it should not.

The reform lasted hours. On July 15, President Trump issued a statement declaring that ICE "cannot give up" traffic stops. Deportation officers were permitted to resume vehicle stops the same day. The agency's own safety measure — adopted after it had killed two of the wrong people in a week — was overruled by the president before it could take effect. The message to agents was unambiguous: keep doing exactly what just killed two men.

The protests

The killings set off "ICE Out" demonstrations across the country — in Houston's Magnolia Park, downtown Los Angeles, Manhattan, Columbia, and other cities. The two names joined a growing list that immigrant communities have been forced to memorize.

The collapsing justification

The administration has justified its escalating force by casting agents as victims — besieged by violent immigrants and protesters who assault them. A New York Times review of the record demolished that story: of more than 400 resolved federal cases accusing people of assaulting or impeding ICE and Border Patrol agents, 213 — more than half — were dismissed, withdrawn, or ended in acquittals.

The prosecutions built to prove that agents are under attack are, in the majority, falling apart in court. The narrative used to license deadly force does not survive contact with the evidence. What survives is the arithmetic the administration would prefer no one do: two dead men in six days, neither of them the target, no cameras rolling, and a president who responded not by asking why, but by ordering that nothing change.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was going to work. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was delivering food. Both were killed by a government that has decided the acceptable cost of its immigration crackdown includes the lives of people it was not even looking for — and that has decided, at the highest level, that this cost is worth paying again.