‘This is our barrio’: Houston’s East End residents say fatal ICE shooting calls for community resilience

From Houston Public Media:

The orange walls of La Michoacana Meat Market stand out among the businesses on Canal Street in Houston’s historic East End neighborhood. For Carlos Rebollar, it’s where his family buys meat.

Describing the East End community, the first word that comes to his mind is “beautiful.” Born in Mexico, he spent most of his life living in the Houston area without legal immigration status. He became a U.S. citizen in 2017 — “You’ll kind of connect the dots as to why I really tried to become a citizen during that time,” he said — and has lived in the East End for more than a decade.

“I began to search its history, found a lot of just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful parts of this history that, to me, meant a lot as an immigrant,” he said. “Even going as far back as the first Mexicans who arrive, we’ve always been having to jump over extra obstacles and hurdles just to establish a life here.”

Just across the street from La Michoacana is a barber shop with a gravel parking lot. In front of that lot on Tuesday, a federal immigration officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who had been living in the United States for decades without permanent legal status, according to his family.

It happened nearly 50 years after another death at the hands of law enforcement — that of 23-year-old U.S. Army veteran José “Joe” Campos Torres — rattled the neighborhood and Houston’s Latino community but also galvanized them.

Crucial details surrounding the killing of Salgado Araujo have been sparse, prompting calls for an independent investigation by Democrats and immigration rights advocates. Security camera footage from the area shared with Houston Public Media and other news outlets depicts a white van being followed down Canal Street by black, unmarked cars, and little more.

The officers involved in the operation were not wearing body cameras, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed, and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia stated she’s been told by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that Salgado Araujo was not the target of the operation.

A spokesperson from ICE claimed Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer, resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” On Friday, an attorney for two of the other individuals in the van with Salgado Araujo disputed this claim, saying that “at no point was there ever an ICE agent directly in front of the vehicle.”

Salgado Araujo was one of multiple people in Texas and across the U.S. to be fatally shot by ICE agents or die in ICE custody during President Donald Trump’s second term as his administration has ramped up immigration-related arrests and deportations. There was a nationwide surge in arrests during the weeks preceding Salgado Araujo’s shooting death.

ICE’s account of the shooting mirrors its statements about the 2025 shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Ruben Ray Martinez in South Texas and Renee Good in Minnesota. In those instances, ICE claimed they attempted to strike officers with their cars before they were shot. Based on video footage, those claims were disputed.

No video of Salgado Araujo’s shooting has surfaced publicly. Security footage depicts the moments before; some passersby videoed the moments afterward, which circulated social media. That’s how many East End residents and Houstonians had learned of the shooting death.

Kattya Distefano, a Houston resident, has lived in East Downtown for many years, but she and her husband recently purchased a home in the Harrisburg area. On Wednesday, she laid flowers at the memorial for Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three, just before hundreds of demonstrators marched in his memory.

“When I saw his eyes, when I saw the picture of him on social media, I immediately thought about my father, and I thought about my mother,” Distefano told Houston Public Media. “I saw the same face of my parents when they would come home from work and just to give us a better opportunity.”

That sentiment was shared by Rebollar, a pastor, who had helped lead a vigil on Wednesday for Salgado Araujo. Seeing the scene of the shooting, he realized it was less than a mile from his home in the East End.

“It was jarring because when I watched the video, I said, ‘Oh … that’s La Michoacana, where we buy our meat for our carne asadas,'” Rebollar said, growing emotional. “And when I saw Lorenzo’s face, I saw my dad’s face. Same skin color hue, same hard-working shoulders and hands. My dad works in construction. My dad is a contractor. My dad picks up his workers. And so, it hit really close to home. So, I said, ‘That could have been my dad,’ but the reality is it wasn’t. It was someone’s dad, it was someone’s spouse.”

East End and the Segundo Barrio

Since the turn of the 20^th century, the neighborhoods east of downtown Houston have been a home for many of the region’s Latino population. In 1910, just 50 people in the Second Ward claimed Mexico as their birthplace, Thomas McWhorter wrote in 2010 for “Houston History Magazine,” though this does not take into account people born in the U.S. with Mexican parents. By 2000, 69% of the population of the Second Ward claimed Hispanic heritage.

After the historic 1900 Galveston hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in American history, decimated Galveston and its port, the Houston Ship Channel became a vital port to the state. The next year, a well at Spindletop in Southeast Texas struck oil.

“The ship channel and the railroad system really put Houston at the nexus of the growing gas and oil industry,” José Aranda, a professor of Latin American studies at Rice University, told Houston Public Media. “But you need labor for that. And corporations love cheap labor. So, labor couldn’t just rely on traditional sources; it had to come from elsewhere. So, from the early 1900s — especially around 1910, 1915 — that labor came from Mexico.”

Aranda, who is also the founding director of Rice’s Program in Latin American studies, said workers both with and without legal status were recruited from Mexico, and the Latino population of the community exploded.

Born in 1961, Aranda grew up in Magnolia Park, a neighborhood within East End. Growing up, he said, there was a local pride from neighbors and businesses depending on which neighborhood or barrio they came from — a “my barrio’s better than your barrio kind of thing,” he said.

“But growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we’re in the shadow of Jim Crow segregation,” he said. “So, a lot of that had to do with Jim Crow and how people’s living situations were very segregated.”

As a result, each of the neighborhoods — including Greater East End, Second Ward, Magnolia Park, or even Denver Harbor to the north — claimed unique characteristics from each other. Eventually, the Chicano Movement brought many of them together as one people in the same struggle.

After World War II and the Korean War, many Latinos from Houston returned home and became involved with labor movements and civil rights advocacy, including with groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC. The leaders in the Chicano Movement sought improved access to education, increased political representation, and better living standards.

“I think a lot of people in the East End feel a loyalty and a regard for that moment of Mexican American activism,” Aranda said.

That activism reached an apex in 1977, when the body of a Mexican American man was found floating in the Buffalo Bayou, beaten and bruised.

The killing of Joe Campos Torres

On May 5, 1977, José “Joe” Campos Torres was arrested after an altercation with the bar manager at Club 21, a neighborhood bar in East End off Canal Street — almost exactly one mile away from where Salgado Araujo was killed half-a-century later. Torres was being taken to jail when Houston Police Department officers took him on a detour that would result in his killing.

Vietnam War veteran Joe Campos Torres was killed by Houston police in 1977. Public domain image

An Army veteran, Torres grew up the youngest of seven children in Denver Harbor and the Second Ward, according to the Texas State Historical Association. His beating and killing, at 23 years old, galvanized the Latino community in Houston.

After arresting him, three HPD officers took Torres to the “hole,” which a contemporaneous “Time” article said was “a large warehouse facing the muddy Buffalo Bayou that winds through the city.” There, they severely beat him.

“Wearing Army fatigues and combat boots, Torres appeared drunk but apparently healthy when police officers took him away,” the article reads. “A few hours later, when the police brought him to jail, he was so badly bruised that duty officers refused to book him.”

The officers were told to bring Torres to Ben Taub Hospital. Instead, they brought him back to the “hole” and continued beating him before forcing him into the Buffalo Bayou, where he drowned. The next day, Torres’ family searched for him and reported him missing. Days later, his body was found in the Buffalo Bayou, bruised and beaten.

Two of the police officers — Terry Wayne Denson and Stephen Orlando — were prosecuted, eventually convicted of negligent homicide. They were sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year. A federal trial found Denson, Orlando and a third officer, Joseph Janish, guilty of violating Torres’ rights. They were sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

The killing, the trial and its aftermath struck a chord with the Latino community in Houston. A year after his killing, on May 7, 1978, hundreds of people gathered at Moody Park in north Houston eventually resulting in what became known as the Moody Park riot. As Robinson Black wrote in “Houston History Magazine,” accounts differ about when the riot began, though most attribute it to a fight that resulted in police coming to the park. Demonstrators eventually overturned patrol cars, Black wrote. Two KPRC journalists were stabbed.

Police arrested 40 people, including three activists labeled as the “Moody Park Three,” who were accused of instigating a riot. Two were sentenced to a fine and probation.

Almost 50 years later, Houston’s then-chief of police Troy Finner called the killing “straight-up murder” in a 2021 ceremony apologizing to Torres’ family.

‘No difference, just different times’

On Tuesday, Torres’ sister, Janie Torres, visited the 6800 block of Canal Street, where Salgado Araujo had been killed just hours before. Fifty years removed from the killing of her own brother, she saw the parallels in their deaths.

“This was in 1977,” Janie said, recounting her brother’s killing. “In 2026, we are still looked at the same. No difference, just different times. Plain and simple.”

The legacy of that year — between Joe Campos Torres’ killing and the Moody Park riot — defined much of the Latino activist community in Houston, even up to Salgado Araujo’s killing. At a vigil Wednesday evening, a woman wore a shirt with Torres’ picture on it. Standing at the site of the killing, Janie Torres said it’s hard to feel safe in the neighborhood.

“That could have easily been me,” Janie Torres told Houston Public Media. “I’m Latina, I’m Chicana, but that could have easily been me going down the street on the next block over. … But am I scared? No, I’m not scared. I’m not scared because I’m going to stand up for what I believe in.”

Other Latinos in the East End neighborhood shared similar sentiments with Houston Public Media of resilience in spite of the fear in the community. Geneva Rajpute, who lives on Canal Street, said she has no fear.

“I hate to say this, but we’re in the hood, this is our barrio,” she said. “If someone’s coming at me aggressive, I’m going to stand tall. I’m going to do what I can. We don’t run from things like that.”

Rajpute grew up in Denver Harbor, just north of East End. After living in southwest Houston for a time, she returned to East End four years ago because, as she said during Wednesday’s vigil, she wanted to return to her home.

“I know the law enforcement is supposed to be for us, but it’s just so scary because it feels like they’re against us,” she said at the vigil, to cheers from the audience. “Guys, we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stick together. And we’ve got to know that if we do nothing, nothing’s going to change.”

Speaking with Houston Public Media the next day, Rajpute said the moment was one that would make the community stronger rather than fearful.

“I feel that we are actually going to overcome this and we are going to make a change,” she said. “This incident that took place is going to be known all over the world, that my little barrio was able to make a big difference.”

Rebollar, the pastor who helped lead the vigil, called Salgado Araujo’s death a moment of lamenting. But, he added, part of lamenting is “raising your voice for justice.”

Sitting in La Michoacana Meat Market, across the street from where Salgado Araujo was killed days earlier, a Houston Public Media reporter asked Rebollar what in his Christian faith drove him to speak up. The answer, he said, is in the life and death of Jesus.

“When I look at the person of Jesus, when I look at the work of Jesus, what he did, his ministry, but also giving his life,” he said, “I see an immigrant who became a refugee in Egypt, who then eventually came back when it was safe and was raised on the margins; was raised in Nazareth, a place that people said, ‘What good can come from Nazareth?’ So, he was raised in a place like Barrio Magnolia or Segundo Barrio, and he was killed at the hands of the state. And mind you, he also freely gave up his life on the cross for us, but that wasn’t the end of the story. The story ends with him even defeating the principalities and powers, the injustices, and defeating death itself, rising from the grave.”

Houston Public Media’s Bianca Seward and Kyle McClenagan contributed to this report.

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