Lorenzo Salgado Araujo had lived in the United States for 35 years. He had three American children. He was a hard working, law abiding man. He had a pending application for labor certification. And an ICE agent shot him dead.

When agents tried to stop the vehicle, the encounter quickly escalated, and an agent shot Mr. Araujo in the abdomen. He died at a hospital hours later.

Homeland security officials said Mr. Araujo had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, though no video or other evidence for that claim has emerged.

DHS has two problems. One is credibility, as their claims of wrongdoing too often end being proven to be false, often complete fabrications in an attempt to justify their violence. The other is their violence, with ICE agents needlessly harming, sometimes killing, people, for no reason. Both are implicated in the killing of Araujo.

DHS released a statement hours after the deadly shooting saying that Salgado Araujo had rammed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle and “weaponized” his white work van “in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”

“That is a lie,” wrote Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, in a handwritten statement. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

The three other people in the white van all separately gave the same account, that the ICE agents “came in and started shooting from the sides.” Unsurprisingly, the agents made a mistake as to who was in the van, believing one passenger looked like someone they targeted for removal.

Federal agents had surveilled an address connected to one of the two Guatemalans weeks before and had seen two white vans at the property, the spokeswoman said in a statement. When they returned to the address on Tuesday, she said, “they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target,” and initiated the traffic stop.

The agents were not wearing body cameras, according to the spokeswoman. Before trying to stop the van, the agents had looked into its owner and learned it was Mr. Araujo, who did not have legal status in the United States, according to the two people familiar with the case.

Contrary to the fever-dreams of the MAGA faithful, not having legal status is not a crime. While it does make Araujo subject to removal, even if deportation would not be a concern given his pending application for a work permit in earlier days, it would not give rise to summary execution of an “illegal,” all of whom are tainted as criminals by the Miller administration. And if he’s an illegal, then who cares if an ICE agents kills him for no reason? After all, if he didn’t want to die, he should have stayed in Mexico 35 years ago, right?

Salgado Araujo’s death marks the first fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed in separate incidents in Minneapolis in January during an enforcement surge in that city. ICE’s account of his killing echoed many of the statements the agency quickly issued in other shootings that resulted in fatalities or injuries to undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens. In several instances, however, video evidence and testimony from witnesses contradicted the agency’s initial accounts, establishing that the officers were not in danger and, in some cases, acted as the aggressors.

Should Araujo have been deported? Perhaps, even though he wasn’t one of those who walked over the border during the Biden administration, as is presumed of all undocumented immigrants of a darker hue who are hated by the radical right. Did he deserve to die? No. Yet, ICE killed him, murdered him if the witnesses’ statements are true rather than the DHS claim that he “weaponized” his van. Having conclusively proven that DHS has no shame in lying about such matters, the witness statements are the more credible of the bunch.

The family and lawyer for Araujo are calling for an independent investigation of the killing. The chance of that happening is not good. All the witnesses from the van are now in ICE detention. The killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo will be chalked up to another lie and outrage by ICE, and then be filed away like the killing of U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti.