Families of people killed by ICE say feds have slandered the victims

Family members of those killed by federal immigration agents told Democratic members of Congress Tuesday that they’ve been victimized twice over by the Trump administration’s pattern of obstruction and lies about the shootings — and about the victims themselves.

The shadow hearing, which was held in Washington, D.C., sought to draw attention to the lack of justice given the victims of the many questionable shootings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that when Markwayne Mullin was tapped to replace Kristi Noem as Department of Homeland Security secretary, “There was hope that (ICE) would abandon the physical brutality and inhumanity of its tactics on the streets, there was hope that there would be accountability.”

That hope has been dashed, he said, most recently with the weekend shooting of a Venezuelan man in Austin, Texas.

California U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, said that as of September 2026, Democrats on the committee have documented over 1,000 “credible and verified instances (of) abuses” under President Donald Trump’s second administration, including 20 people shot by ICE, while 58 have died in ICE custody.

With a lack of subpoena power, Democrats do not have the ability to compel officials from the administration to testify. Instead, they’ve used this sort of forum, including one in Maine last month, to hear from willing witnesses.

‘Dual assassinations’

Family members and other representatives of Ruben Ray Martinez and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of Texas, Renée Good and Alex Pretti of Minnesota, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero of Maine all testified.

The witnesses all described how, in addition to a complete lack of information and oversight after the shootings, the federal government spread falsehoods about the people killed.

Sean Murphy, an attorney representing the Guerrero family, told the panel, “The dehumanization of the victims of these crimes is despicable.”

“The patterns of dual assassinations — one of the body and then of the character — is disgusting, and there’s a pattern that if you’re not seeing it, it’s because you have your eyes closed,” Murphy said.

Ronaldo Salgado and Lorenzo Salgado Jr., whose father was shot and killed in July while driving to work, said the feds provided little information about what led to the shooting but instead made repeated false claims that were later walked back, including that their father had been the target of the operation and had weaponized his vehicle.

“DHS also claimed there may have been drugs in the vehicle, which, if anyone who knew my father would tell you, is absurd, and which testing later proved to be false, as we all knew it would,” Lorenzo Salgado Jr. said.

Stella Carlson, a community activist who filmed the shooting of Pretti in Minneapolis, told the lawmakers that she felt like she “witnessed two assassinations, the first was the literal assasination of Alex and the second was the attempted assassination of his character.”

Pretti, an ICU nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs, was described by the Trump administration as a “domestic terrorist.” He had come to the aid of a woman pushed down by a federal officer before he was disarmed and shot in the back.

“We observed his murder with our own eyes, and the truth does not become less true because someone with great power tells a louder lie,” Carlson said. “When people are killed, and when the public is given false accounts of what happened, there must be accountability.”

ICE shot 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez in March 2025, making him the first U.S. citizen killed by ICE during the second Trump administration. As Blumenthal noted, however, “That fact was not disclosed to his family or to the public for nearly a year.”

His mother, Rachel Reyes, also told the panel about how video evidence and testimony from his lifelong best friend, who had been a passenger in the car at the time, contradicted the official account of the events that led to the shooting.

“Though the circumstances surrounding his death and these other victims are distinctly different, the pattern is the same: lives cut short by the same agency, agents without body cameras, no warnings, no attempt to de-escalate, excessive force followed by deflection and a lack of accountability after the fact,” Reyes said. “Other similarities are that these victims, despite being nonviolent community members with no criminal background, were disparaged and blamed to shift focus away from the officer’s misconduct.”

“What happened to my son is personal, but it should be a concern for us all,” she said.

As in the other instances, the government changed the official narrative of Guerrero’s shooting.

At first, Mullin told independent U.S. Sen. Angus King that Guerrero “weaponized” his vehicle before being shot by an ICE agent. But ICE later said he attempted to flee and “fearing for public safety” an agent shot him.