When another person dies, crying feels inadequate – like a thimble of my tears can do anything. Another murder by the state – by a racist administration hell bent on destroying us, our people, our history.
Father, where are you. Father, you were driving home. You were driving toward the little rest this country allows a man like you, enough so you could wake up and do it again tomorrow for your family. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was murdered. No father should be taken. And yet this is the daily business of this country to reach into a home and pull loved ones out of it. A father, a son, a daughter, an aunt, a mother. To sever them from the people who love them. From the neighbors who counted on them. From the community they built with their own hands.
Pull one string and the whole heart answers. When we say the names Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, their images clear as they shadow and obscure the over 50 other people who have died at the hands of ICE. Died under an administration that will not recognize our humanity or our families as worth protecting. We keep calling for justice for the ones who never made a headline – whose deaths didn’t earn a news cycle, who were filed away, who died behind bars. This country has made a business of keeping people from people. It expects us to shrink before the odds it has rigged. It expects the noise of cable news to drown out the sound of children asking where their parents went.
That this happened three days after the country’s 250th birthday feels less like coincidence than confession. Other questions beneath the fireworks: why celebrate on stolen land? Why celebrate while families are still being pulled apart? Why celebrate a nation where a father can’t finish a day’s work and come home to his children?
His son, Ronaldo Salgado, said it plainly: “He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of a Mexican man shot and killed by ICE. He deserved to live a quiet life as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband, a father and a job creator for dozens of men who also wanted the American dream.”
Four months ago, in March, an ICE agent shot and killed 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez. Two months before that, Keith Porter was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Day. These are only two more names.
Our neighbors. Our friends. Our families. All of us within reach. This is the moment to move – to fund the work, to stand with the communities already living this, to choose collective protection over the comfort of looking away.
That’s why we fund and follow the leadership of organizations rooted in justice, organizations that were doing this work long before it had a headline:
Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)
California Domestic Workers Coalition
California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative
CHIRLA
Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP)
Partnership for Advancement of New Americans (PANA)
Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
ICE, and the agents responsible for separating, detaining, and killing members of our communities, must be held accountable. We said in January of this year and it bears repeating. Let 2026 be the year we abolish ICE. Let 2026 be the year we end the raids, the deportations, and the violence poisoning our neighborhoods.
Father, where art thou. We’re still asking. We intend to keep asking until the answer isn’t another name. We cannot bring Lorenzo home. But we can do the one thing this country failed to do for him: show up. If you’re able, please donate to support Lorenzo’s family during this devastating time. Every contribution—no matter the amount—helps ease the financial burden and reminds the Salgado Araujo family that they are not alone.