(Dobbs) Looking at that photo, he doesn’t strike me as “the worst of the worst.”It’s too late to say this is growing out of hand. It already has grown out of hand.
You know how President Trump has assured us that in his crusade to deport illegal immigrants, his agents are apprehending “the worst of the worst?” Apparently this is what he means. The man’s name was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who has lived and made an honest living building homes in Houston for 35 years. He was the first of two fatalities in the past week, thanks to the undisciplined behavior of Trump’s agents. The second was the day before yesterday, in Maine. A 26-year-old father named Joan Sebastian Guerrero. In The Washington Post, journalist Philip Kennicott painted a picture of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo: “Dressed in a pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt, standing at a counter, behind a large and expertly decorated birthday cake. The pastel polo shirt, the happy _expression_ on his face, the cake that marks his 52nd birthday and signs of a tidy, well-made house behind him all reinforce the impression Ronaldo Salgado wanted enshrined as the lasting memory of his father: that of a man wise enough to be happy with what life has given him.” I know it’s only a gut feeling, but looking at that photo, he doesn’t strike me as “the worst of the worst.” The ones who do strike me as the worst of the worst are the federal agents carrying out Trump’s dirty work. Not all of them, maybe not most of them, but enough to strike fear in good citizens from one end of this nation to the other, fear that with just one wrong move, they could die. We could die. This year alone there was Renee Good, shot to death in her car during anti-ICE protests in January in Minneapolis. Then just two weeks later, Alex Pretti, a protester, shot and killed on a sidewalk while already restrained by agents. Then Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston, then Guerrero, also a traffic stop, in Biddeford, Maine. Is “shoot to kill” all these guys know? In all four cases, the party line from ICE and other agencies is, “We fired in self-defense.” That is what they said about Araujo. He “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” Ultimately, the agent “discharged his weapon in self-defense.” Except everything from eyewitness accounts to independent videos to even a doorbell camera that recorded the audio of the killing seems to contradict that. We might know more, but conveniently, the agents on the ground in Houston were not equipped with body cameras, which might support their version of the shooting if it’s true. They also were operating in unmarked cars. Same story in Maine. No body cameras. The agency’s explanation of that one is, “ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon.” “Fearing for public safety.” That’s rich. We’ve seen enough of these killings to know, the ones who have the most to fear for their safety are the public. Yesterday, ICE put a pause on traffic stops. Three of the four people killed this year, and another killed last year, were shot in their cars. Color me skeptical about what drove this decision. Trump and his toadies have been so lacking in compassion, so lacking in candor about all the shootings, it seems as likely that they made this call as much to reduce the heat on them as to reduce the death rate on America’s streets. A former acting ICE director named John Sandweg told The Washington Post that chasing immigrants this way isn’t a major part of ICE agents’ training. “They’re not as well-versed and -trained compared to a city patrol officer. There’s got to be a moratorium on how to avoid this.” Too late though for the victims. The two this past week were in the wrong places at the wrong times. Araujo, who was from Mexico, has been trying to become a legal resident. His sons say he had submitted fingerprints to immigration officials in Houston and might have been just months away from winning a permit to work. The disgrace of it all is, the Department of Homeland Security has admitted that when agents stopped Araujo, he wasn’t their intended target. Their intended target was from Guatemala and drove a white van. Araujo’s big mistake was, he also drove a white van. Doesn’t sound like a guy trying to run. The agents just screwed up. Araujo is dead because of it. Guerrero, in Maine, was a Colombian citizen who had a Social Security number and, according to immigration advocates, was legally working in the United States. There were immigration court proceedings against him but he was showing up for them. What ICE said in a statement was that it “was conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal.” But the next disgrace: Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Maine’s senator Angus King that as it turns out, the agents went after the wrong guy. It wasn’t Guerrero they were looking for. But he is dead because of it. And so are others also caught up in Donald Trump’s cruel crusade. With many more shot and wounded. The New York Times put together this list. It includes “people who were fired upon during immigration enforcement activities in President Trump’s second term.” What are the odds that the agents who screwed up with such horrific consequences will be brought to account? So far, not very good. Federal investigators blocked local law enforcement who tried to collect testimony and evidence after the two fatal shootings of American citizens in Minneapolis. Now, according to both the mayor and the district attorney in Houston, they’re doing the same thing there. The FBI only this week finally released its own report on the Minnesota killings. After six months, how cleansed might that now be? Even the president of Mexico, who has gotten on well with Donald Trump, has had enough. After three Mexican nationals have died at the hands of ICE on the streets and fourteen have died in detention centers since Trump came back to office, she calls them “human rights violations” and is sending a formal complaint to the department of justice. But Trump isn’t dialing it down. In fact as this Washington Post graph shows, he’s dialing it up again. Just yesterday, The Denver Post reported that ICE has signed a contract for a new detention center in an abandoned prison in Colorado. It’s with a private prison company called Geo Group that runs these centers elsewhere and will rehabilitate and run this one, housing another 1,200 people, for more than half a billion dollars. All told, Geo Group will detain more than 27,000 people for ICE. The latest stated goal of the Trump Administration is to arrest 2,000 people a day. So far, it is meeting that goal. It’s too late to say this is growing out of hand. It already has grown out of hand. Leave a comment Philip Kennicott, who wrote in the Washington Post about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, ended his story talking about “the enormity of recent cruelty, the wars abroad and conflicts at home.” Then he framed it in the context of time: “If we honored all the unnecessary death caused by U.S. policies since Jan. 20, 2025, if we thought of one person per day who might still be alive, it would take more than 2,000 years before we came to the end of the dismal list, and by then more death would have piled up.” It’s already happening. Share ************************************************************************************************************* An epilogue to what I wrote yesterday when I described Donald Trump’s decisions in the Iran war (and so much more) as “impulsive, vituperative, explosive.” And often expensively counter-productive. Yesterday afternoon he reversed the chaotic commitment he’d made the day before to charge multi-million-dollar tolls on ships the U.S. helps pass through the Hormuz Strait, so that the United States could “be reimbursed because we’re protecting a very rich portion of the world.” Maybe one of his experts, in uniform or civilian clothes, had the guts to explain to the president the potential economic and military costs of his rash decision. Maybe, with his eye on the upcoming midterm elections, he saw how stupid it was. The rest of us already did. He also told Fox News yesterday about his next attack plans: “Next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.” I wonder if anyone will have the cajones to explain to this man that that might amount to war crimes?
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