On Friday evening, a small group of autonomous community organizers and protestors held a vigil for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Los Angeles, a father who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Houston during an early morning traffic stop on July 7.
A crowd of 50 to 60 people gathered directly across the street from the Metropolitan Detention Center on 535 N. Alameda Street. The center is a federal jail operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) where an underground immigration holding site is located, known as B18.
The vigil was small, but full of life. A four-foot table laid adorned with a black table cloth, sunflowers, roses, as well as small and large plastic candles. Near the legs of the table were bouquets of flowers that mourners laid down in honor of Lorenzo.
The organizers handed out candles and the crowd gathered around the table as several people gave speeches. Each person’s words were full of mourning, but vastly different.
”It’s time to get organized,” one protestor said.
Another spoke on the mic and vocalized their anger at how small the crowd was for the fallen man.
”This entire street should be full,” he said.
L.A. TACO reported on Lorenzo’s death days ago. He is included in our immigration enforcement related death tracker. He is the 10th person to die during an enforcement action, and is currently the sixth person to be shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent or a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer since Trump took office in 2025.
Protestors and organizers painted on a large banner that read “Justice for Lorenzo,” and placed it just above the table. Another banner read, “Hoy no llegó papá,” in Spanish that translates to, “Dad didn’t come home today.” It’s a reference to Will Suarez’s art piece that he painted to sympathize with the family of Lorenzo, a phrase no family ever wants to hear.
After the vigil, several mourners walked across the street, just outside a fence that was put up around the detention center, to protest the immigration holding site.
Ronaldo Salgado, Lorenzo’s eldest son, gave a speech on July 8, saying “He was a hard working family man who never wanted his name to be known by anyone else outside of his family. He wanted nothing else in life but to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people.”
