Washington, DC – This week, a newly released death certificate confirmed that Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, an Afghan national who fought alongside U.S. Special Forces for a decade, died within 24 hours of ICE detaining him at his Texas home in March. ICE arrested Paktiawal, a father of six with a pending asylum claim, as he helped his children get ready for school.
And just yesterday, an ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston’s East End. Salgado Araujo had lived in the U.S. for nearly 35 years, working in construction to support his wife and three children and in the process of getting legal status.He was on his way to work that morning, picking up members of his construction crew, when ICE agents stopped his van.
These deaths add to the mass deportation machine’s rising toll: more than 50 people have now died in ICE custody since Trump took office, the highest death toll in over two decades. And as the death toll climbs, the administration is moving to gut the very internal watchdog office responsible for detention oversight, requesting Congress eliminate its funding entirely. From detention centers to city streets, this administration has shown it will not slow down or accept accountability, even when the cost is human lives.
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice issued the following statement:
“We are running out of adjectives to describe the cruelty and brutality of the Trump/Miller deportation campaign. The devastating – and entirely preventable – deaths of Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo stem from the same reality: an administration that prizes deportation numbers over a human life. People thought the chaos and impunity of Minneapolis was behind us. The cruelty of these deaths proves it never left. Now families like the Paktiawals and the Salgado Araujos are burying fathers instead of building their futures together. President Trump, Congress and DHS owe these families, and the American people, real answers. ICE must face accountability before more people die.”
