Petition: Media Must Cover ICE's Killing Spree Critically

In the span of one week, ICE agents shot and killed two men during vehicle stops — Joan Sebastián Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father in Maine who was authorized to work in the U.S., and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old small business owner in Houston who had lived here for 35 years. Reports indicate Guerrero's vehicle stop may have been a case of mistaken identity. Eyewitnesses directly contradicted the official account of Salgado Araujo's killing. Neither triggering agent has been publicly identified. These are now the tenth and eleventh fatal ICE shootings since Trump returned to office — and ICE's response was not accountability, but a quiet internal memo suspending vehicle stops while agents receive "additional training."

This is not a series of tragic accidents. It is the predictable consequence of a rapid, poorly supervised expansion of an agency that operates in secret, pre-clears its own shootings as justified, and withholds evidence from local investigators. ICE has hired thousands of new agents under enormous pressure to produce deportation numbers, with inadequate vetting and training. The results are people dying in the street.

We call on the media to cover ICE's escalating pattern of fatal violence not as an immigration story, but as a law enforcement accountability crisis — one that demands to know who these agents are, who hired them, what oversight exists, and why an agency that has now killed eleven people in six months faces no independent investigation. The public deserves reporting that treats these deaths with the same scrutiny it would apply to any other armed institution operating beyond accountability.