Petition: Media Must Cover ICE as an Agency Out of Control

On Tuesday morning in Houston, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a man who had lived in the United States for 35 years and was on his way to work, close to obtaining legal status. He is the tenth person federal immigration agents have shot and killed since Trump returned to office. ICE shootings in 2026 are already outpacing 2025. More than 50 people have died in ICE custody under this administration — a mortality rate at its highest level in over a decade. And when local authorities tried to investigate Araujo's killing, the federal government shut them out, seizing control of all key evidence. The three eyewitnesses to his death — his co-workers — remain in immigration detention, where officials are reportedly pressuring them to self-deport before they can tell their story.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a pattern of lethal violence, institutional cover-up, and deliberate opacity that the administration is counting on the media to underreport. ICE operates out of unmarked vehicles, withholds information from families and local prosecutors alike, and has stopped reporting deaths of recently released detainees entirely. The administration has pre-emptively declared its own shootings justified — including cases with contradicting video evidence — before any investigation concludes.

We call on the media to stop covering ICE as a law enforcement agency operating within normal bounds and start covering it as what the evidence shows: an agency engaged in escalating violence, systematic deception, and the deliberate silencing of witnesses. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo's son asked the world not to reduce his father to a headline. The media can honor that by telling the full story.