Democrats vow to investigate ICE killings when they regain power
‘We will make sure justice happens when we take back the halls of Congress’
A panel of House Democrats on Friday vowed to investigate the multiple fatal shootings by ICE agents as soon as they regain control of the chamber.
The Democrats were holding a field hearing in Houston, where they heard testimony about the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a longtime local resident and Mexican national who was shot dead by an ICE agent while on his way to work on July 7.
“In January, new leadership will happen in the halls of Congress,” said Rep. Christian Menefee, a Houston Democrat. “And I know that every single person sitting up on this stage right now will be in full throated support of an investigation.”
Directing his comments to two of Salgado Araujo sons, who delivered a moving statement about their father, Menefee said “Thank you for your courage. And we will make sure justice happens when we take back the halls of Congress.”
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, also a Houston Democrat, called out the “utter failure of this Republican controlled Congress that has not only failed to address -- it has refused to address -- the abuses that this White House is directing in terms of immigration enforcement operations.”
She continued: “And it has done nothing – nothing – when innocent people in this country have been killed at the hands of federal immigration agents this year and during this term.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the homeland security committee, called for accountability. “Over the years, the Committee on Homeland Security has conducted oversight on countless issues,” he said, “but none have been more urgent than Americans and immigrants alike being locked up, assaulted, shot, and even killed by the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and CBP.”
The ACLU’s Immigration Reform Agenda
The ACLU is holding an “ICE Abuse Teach-in” via Zoom tomorrow (Thursday) at 8 p.m. ET, following up on its recent report, “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” which documents widespread civil rights violations carried out by immigration agents in 2025.
The report ends with a series of recommendations for Congress – essentially an agenda for 2029, given that none of them would survive a Trump veto. They include:
Remove the immigration agencies from the Department of Homeland Security, which is too vast to allow for effective congressional oversight or internal agency accountability.
Establish a new cabinet-level Immigration Management Agency oriented toward service — with a mission to keep families together, support American communities and meet the needs of the American workforce.
Enact legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship for millions of long-standing residents, who are American in every way but on paper. Replace the threat of violent “enforcement” with fair, dignified, and efficient processing and clear rules to qualify for termination of removal proceedings and legal status, including citizenship.
Dismantle the national deportation policing force in light of the extensive record of serious constitutional violations described in this report and ongoing litigation.
Anti-ICE Protests Across the Country
Saturday was a National Day of Action for Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero – who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Maine on July 13 – and others who have been killed by ICE.
Organizers said there were more than 300 vigils across the country.
Hundreds of people marched through downtown Los Angeles, ABC7 reported. “The march ended with a vigil at Olvera Street, where volunteers carried dozens of empty, cardboard coffins through the heart of the city. Organizers said each coffin represented a life lost during ICE enforcement or while in immigration custody.”
Fifty demonstrators gathered in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Times reported. “They wore fliers around their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of some of the 75 people who have died since January 2025. ‘Killed by ICE’ was printed above a photo of each person.”
Hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported, some of them carrying “cardboard monarch butterflies, a colorful symbol associated with the migration journeys of immigrants and refugees.”
Protesters in Charlotte, N.C., mourned ICE victims and condemned an ICE detention center set to open in Hertford County, about 280 miles north of Charlotte along the Virginia border, the Charlotte Observer reported.
In Houston, Saturday’s vigil was preceded by an economic boycott on Friday and a rally called “Shut It Down for Lorenzo.” KHOU reported that more than 50 businesses across Houston’s East End closed for the day.
There were other anti-ICE protests as well.
KTVB reported that in Twin Falls, Idaho, dozens of community members protested against ICE-related flights departing from the Twin Falls Airport.
VTDigger reported that 13 protesters were arrested in Williston, Vermont, on Friday, for blocking access to ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center. Organizers call the center ICE’s “national spy center, where surveillance of Americans is orchestrated.”
And two Massachusetts teachers are marching the length of Cape Cod to protest conditions ICE detainees at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the Plymouth Independent reported.
The Week in the Courts
Lawyers are not giving up their fight against the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from several different countries. As CNN reports: “A month after the Supreme Court curtailed lower courts’ ability to block the Trump administration from revoking temporary deportation protections, fresh efforts to halt the government’s plans for the Syrian national and thousands of others fleeing war and natural disasters are heating up around the country.” The Washington Post has more.
Dueling appellate court decisions have left the future of Trump’s attempt to seize control of mail-in voting in limbo. The Boston-based First Circuit on Saturday agreed with a district court ruling that Trump’s order is unconstitutional and that the lawsuit is timely because of “the inescapable legal requirements and impending deadlines that States currently face in facilitating mail-in and absentee balloting for immediately upcoming elections.” On Tuesday, however, the D.C. Circuit grudgingly agreed with the government that “while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture.” After the first ruling, Trump asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
Here’s a doozy. A judge in Oregon slammed DOJ for seeking revenge against Portland for its arrest of a conservative influencer. DOJ had demanded Portland turn over a slew of internal documents. Judge Michael H. Simon wrote that “the Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the United States has brought this motion in bad faith and with unclean hands.” Among the smoking guns: a tweet by assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon -- “Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.” – which Simon wrote “exhibits all the hallmarks of a threat and attempted intimidation.”
The DOJ is now 0 and 17 in its attempts to force states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. Judge Claria Horn Boom dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit against the Kentucky Board of Elections, noting that “In considering a nearly identical factual predicate, the Sixth Circuit squarely resolved these issues in favor of the Defendants.”
Another politicized prosecution is at an end: The Justice Department has moved to dismiss charges against Dennis Huerta, the California labor leader who was arrested a year ago as he participated in a peaceful anti-ICE demonstration. Huerta was initially charged with a felony count of conspiring to impede an officer, when in fact he was assaulted by ICE agents, requiring his hospitalization. (Marcy Wheeler has a great dissection of the case and its undoing.)
Venezuelan men who the Trump administration sent to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador have sued the airline companies that flew them there. The companies “knowingly rendered over 230 Venezuelan migrants to confinement in inhumane conditions and torture,” the suit says. They “rushed to provide transportation services essential to the scheme’s success” even as a judge was enjoining it. “But for Defendants’ actions, the Administration’s unlawful plot would not have succeeded.”
Attorneys general from 25 states and Washington, D.C., have filed suit against the Trump administration’s “unprecedented campaign to leverage the billions of dollars in federal funding that they administer to coerce States into adopting the Administration’s preferred policies” regarding voting and immigration.
Attorneys for David Hearn, the Olympian canoeist charged with felony destruction of property after he touched some of the peeling liner of Trump’s botched Reflecting Pool, are requesting to review the full transcript from the grand jury proceedings. They suspect – with good reason – that the grand jury “was misled in a manner that substantially influenced the decision to indict and prejudiced Mr. Hearn.”
Privacy rights advocates have filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating the Privacy Act and the First Amendment by unlawfully surveilling people who peacefully observe and document federal immigration enforcement. “Beginning sometime in 2025,” the lawsuit says, “DHS deployed a dragnet of drones, body cams, face-scanning apps, license-plate scanners, and camera phones to, as one memo instructed, ‘capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.’”
Getting Ready for the Midterms
Indivisible is kicking off its “Hands Off Our Vote” program with a national call tomorrow (Thursday) at 8 p.m. ET. The mission is “to ensure all eligible voters get to cast their ballot, and that those ballots get counted.” They promise to “pull back the curtain on our strategy and theory of change, and walk through how you can step up to protect the vote no matter where you live.”
Democracy Forward has kicked off its “100 Days of Action” for people who want to do something “to effectively oppose threats to the elections and to strengthen our communities and our democracy.”
And Anna Dorman and Aaron Baird write for Protect Democracy:
On the second Sunday in April of this year, some 50,000 Hungarians — about one out of every 200 people in the country — spent the day inside polling stations, watching votes get counted. They weren’t election officials; they were volunteers who signed up, took the training, and sat through the count because their movement asked them to and they said yes.
That night, Viktor Orbán conceded.
Of course, the monitors didn’t beat him by themselves. They were among the most visible components of a strategy months in the making in which nearly everyone had a job. For context, for the United States to match that effort per capita, it would take about 1.7 million people, including you.