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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: wzambon ✶❂🐝 BRONZE
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Number: of 84357 
Subject: The Familiar Smear
Date: 07/17/26 12:15 PM
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THERE IS A FAMILIAR PATTERN to how the Trump administration responds when its immigration enforcement agents commit a high-profile killing: They move swiftly to malign the victim.
Usually, this involves dredging up menacing pictures. Often it means pointing to past, unrelated crimes. In the case of Alex Pretti, it meant surfacing video of a separate confrontation he had with ICE officers before he was fatally shot.
Now, following the killing last week of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE, we find ourselves in this cycle once again.
Reports emerged on Wednesday that the FBI, which is leading an investigation of the confrontation in which Araujo was shot to death in Houston, claimed to have found potential “controlled substances” in Araujo’s van. According to a search-warrant application approved by a judge on Tuesday and obtained by the New York Times, an FBI special agent inspecting the van sometime after the fatal incident saw eight “plastic bags with what appeared to be a white crystal-like substance”—packaging supposedly “consistent with methamphetamine.” The news was quickly amplified by right-wing media, which posted photos from the warrant application showing the small bags of powder.
Alarm bells went off immediately. It’s unusual for an application like this to be unsealed so swiftly, as the Times notes. And knowing the Trump administration’s history of vilifying its victims, it was hard to escape the suspicion this was orchestrated to insinuate Araujo was not an innocent working-class immigrant father but rather a . . . drug addict? A drug pusher? A bad guy somehow deserving of the bullets?
It strained credulity. And, sure enough,
a day after the Times report, local officials poured water on the claim. “Based on the information we have regarding who Mr. Salgado was and just eyeballing the evidence as it was collected yesterday, we don’t believe that they are drugs,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told CNN. He added, “We have information that we’re not going to release yet.”
While Teare wasn’t ready to release the information, the lawyer for Lorenzo’s brother Victor felt no such compunction.
“After consulting with my client and his family, our understanding is that this was granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance,” that lawyer, Ruby Powers, told the Texas Tribune.
Regardless of the origin of the substance in the van, there is something deeply unsettling going on here. It’s not just that law enforcement seems more intent on winning PR campaigns than holding bad actors to account; it’s that they’re smearing people even after they’ve shipped them off to their graves. If, indeed, the substance in his car was a homemade mix, that would add another layer of insult: Lorenzo being defamed for preparing a drink to help him do his backbreaking work.
The documented evidence on Lorenzo depicts a good man. A hard-working father who put three kids through college. He was not the target of ICE operations the day he was killed. Nor, as the Times notes, were drugs “the reason for the encounter” that resulted in his shooting. In fact, the paper notes, “there has been no indication that agents pursuing the van that day suspected drugs were present.” Nor have there been indications that Araujo or his passengers were involved in criminal activities

open.substack.com - Shoot first smear later lorenzo salgado araujo
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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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