Substance in Houston ICE shooting van was not drugs, district attorney’s office says testing confirms

By Elise Hammond, Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough, Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — The substance collected from the van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo when he was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in Houston this month was not drugs, according to a spokesperson for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office who said their office had been notified of the results.

This comes after the FBI filed a warrant application saying the agency had cause to believe an investigator found illegal drugs in the vehicle being driven by the 52-year-old Mexican immigrant and longtime Texas resident when he was fatally shot on July 7.

When reached for comment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and the Texas Department of Public Safety said they did not have additional information to provide.

The FBI declined to comment when contacted by CNN.

The FBI’s suspicion about drugs became public in mid-July after a court unsealed the warrant application. That drew pushback from Salgado Araujo’s family, whose lawyer said she believed the substance was salt, used to make a homemade electrolyte mix.

An attorney for Salgado Araujo’s brother, who witnessed the shooting, said Friday “an unproven claim was allowed to circulate before it was tested, and the way it was made public did real damage, diverting attention from what actually matters in this case.”

Federal authorities’ account of the fatal shooting — that ICE agents tried to stop a van containing Salgado Araujo and three passengers during an immigration enforcement operation, and an agent fired in self-defense as Salgado Araujo maneuvered the vehicle — has faced scrutiny.

The officers involved were not wearing body-worn cameras. Salgado Araujo was one of two people fatally shot this month by ICE officers during attempted vehicle stops. The shootings in Houston and Maine reignited debate about ICE tactics.

“None of the agents involved were wearing body cameras, so we’ll never have that perspective,” said one of Salgado Araujo’s sons earlier Friday at an oversight forum examining the use of force by ICE in the shooting.

“Now they’re saying there may have been drugs in the vehicle, which anyone who knew our father would tell you is absurd,” Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Jr. said at the hearing, held by members of several congressional committees.

“He did not use drugs. He abhorred them.”

Texas Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia said an attempt to “cast a shadow over Lorenzo Salgado’s name has failed,” in her response to learning of the test results.

“As his family has said all along, this was an electrolyte powder to stay hydrated working outside in the hot Texas summer,” Garcia said.

Clashing narratives from federal officials, family

Salgado Araujo was driving to work with three members of his construction crew, including his brother, when ICE agents tried to stop his van during a “targeted enforcement operation,” the agency said.

The agency did not specify whether Salgado Araujo was the intended target, but a source with preliminary details about the incident said he was not.

ICE initially said Salgado Araujo “rammed” into the ICE vehicle and attempted to run over an agent with his van, which led to an officer firing his weapon in “self-defense.”

Men who were in Salgado Araujo’s work van say ICE’s version of events was false, attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra and Garcia said. Two of the men told Garcia the agents’ vehicles bumped into them and then swayed into the van, forcing them to stop.

The agents never identified themselves to the men, they told Garcia. The men told Garcia agents had exited their vehicles and run toward the van, she told CNN. They pulled out the passengers as one of the agents fired one shot at Salgado Araujo, she said they told her.

Hours before the shooting, agents were investigating two Guatemalan men known to be driving a white van who had previously evaded arrest and were potentially subject to deportation, said Aaron Reitz, the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.

While searching for that van, officers received a report of a similar one in the area that then fled when they tried to pull it over, Reitz said.

Later that morning, officers located what they believed to be the same van and “successfully surrounded the vehicle,” Reitz said.

The van was registered to Salgado Araujo, who agents determined to be in the country illegally, a source with preliminary details about the incident told CNN.

Federal authorities have not indicated that the ICE agents who stopped the van thought drugs were inside when the stop happened.

Unsealed warrant application prompts backlash

One of the federal agents at the scene said he saw small bags of a white, crystal-like substance inside the van.

That officer, FBI Special Agent David McNielly, filed a warrant application a week after the shooting citing probable cause for “distribution, manufacturing, or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance,” the warrant read in part.

But the search warrant was unsealed and made public the next day without explanation, prompting backlash from advocates, officials and legal experts who called it unusual for such information to be made public during an ongoing criminal investigation.

The move by the federal government has “demonstrated that it is more interested in creating a false narrative than in seeking the truth,” the ACLU of Texas said in a statement Friday.

“The Salgados deserve real answers about what happened to their father, and we reiterate our call for an independent and complete investigation,” the ACLU said.

The application’s unsealing also was criticized by the district attorney of Texas’ Harris County, who told CNN the substance’s nature should have no bearing on investigations into whether the killing was justified, or whether the stop was warranted.

District Attorney Sean Teare said last week he was concerned about the motives for the warrant’s unsealing and the federal government using their belief drugs were in the car to deport the men.

That’s why Teare’s office has “already certified that all three of those individuals are material witnesses in a death investigation,” he said.

But Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor Salgado Araujo, remains in ICE custody, attorney Powers said.

“I still question to this day why the most material witness in this shooting is still detained in immigration two and a half weeks after this unfortunate event,” Powers told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday.

She is calling for “his release so he can participate fully in the investigation, and for an independent investigation into how Lorenzo died,” she said in a statement earlier Friday

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Josh Campbell and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.