HOUSTON — Since President Trump returned to the White House, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and his family agonized about what he should do if immigration agents stopped him. He was in the process of obtaining legal residency after one of his sons, an American citizen, sponsored him — he carried that paperwork with him, the family said.

“He’s always been aware of what to do in the event that he got pulled over, he was detained,” his eldest son, 29-year-old Ronaldo Salgado, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “He knew he wasn’t supposed to sign anything, he knew that he wasn’t supposed to give them a hard time.”

That’s why the family doesn’t believe the claims made by federal agents that Salgado Araujo allegedly rammed an unmarked car driven by a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent early Tuesday morning. ICE officials claim that the 52-year-old “refused to follow multiple verbal commands” and “weaponized his vehicle” to try to run over the agent who fired the fatal shot.

Instead they believe that their father, a construction worker who had no criminal record, panicked after unmarked cars followed him and suspected someone was trying to steal his van and his work tools. It’s not uncommon for ICE agents to use unmarked cars and wear masks as they attempt arrests, and advocacy groups say the tactic means people often aren’t aware that it’s federal agents detaining them.

“I know this in my heart, he thought that he was going to get robbed for his tools,” the younger Salgado said. “One of his worst fears is that someone took away his work tools because that is how he made his livelihood.”

Salgado and his brother, a 27-year-old engineer who lives in Washington, D.C, spoke at an emotional, often heated, press conference Wednesday in which Houston leaders and civil rights advocates said that they had received little information from ICE about the fatal shooting and urged the city and county to launch a full, open investigation.

“There must be such an investigation,” said U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat. “We must not only have it, we must have a hearing, so that the public can see and hear as much evidence as is available, especially body camera footage.”

After the press conference, the family met with Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who has called for anyone with video or witness accounts to come forward.

The younger Salgado said that his father, who came here from Mexico with his high school sweetheart nearly four decades ago, had built up a thriving construction business. He urged his sons to work hard like him and all three graduated from college, one from the prestigious Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Salgado, a Houston teacher, said that his dad “wanted nothing else in life but to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people.”

He was a “man of routine” who always began his day before sunrise and typically left the house around 6 a.m. after a hearty breakfast cooked by his wife to head to his job building homes in North Houston.

But early Tuesday morning, after Salgado Araujo picked up three other men, including his brother, to go to a construction job, federal agents in unmarked vehicles suddenly stopped him. An unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that the arrest was part of an unspecified “targeted enforcement operation” in Houston’s East End, a predominantly Latino neighborhood.

Spokespeople did not say why Salgado Araujo was on their radar.

Salgado said his father knew to respect law enforcement.

“Had my father seen an emblem of ICE, or an emblem that says anything about law enforcement agency, my father would have complied,” the son added. “He would have not run away because he feared for his life.”

On Wednesday evening, DHS issued a statement saying the agency would not “expose the name” of the officer who shot Salgado Araujo.

Demands for an investigation

Local elected leaders and other advocates echoed demands for an independent investigation into Salgado Araujo’s death.

“What we know is very thin,” said Juan Proaño, who heads the League of United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group that was founded nearly a century ago in Corpus Christi. “We want a full and transparent investigation. Every piece of evidence, body camera footage, dash cam footage, bystander video, dispatch records must all be preserved and released to an independent investigator and to the public.”

LULAC is offering a $5,000 reward for information and videos leading to “the arrest, indictment, conviction, or exoneration of any person involved in this potential murder.”

Proaño told the Tribune that the family plans to file a federal lawsuit against the government, but first must lodge a complaint under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows people to sue the government for injury, death or property damage caused by the negligence or wrongful acts of a federal employee acting within their job duties.

Domingo Garcia, LULAC’s national president, asked the Houston Police Department to investigate, saying that he does not trust a federal investigation.

“We don’t expect the truth from the Department of Justice or from the FBI,” Garcia said. “We expect a whitewash, that’s just what we expect. But let me just be very clear, the only way we hold them accountable is if the citizens and the residents of Houston hold them accountable.”

Speaker after speaker on Wednesday — including U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, another Houston Democrat who represents the area of Houston where the shooting occurred — urged a thorough and transparent investigation from an entity unaffiliated with ICE.

They hammered comparisons with the fatal ICE shooting in January of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother who was at a protest during ICE’s Operation Metro Surge that month when federal agents shot and killed her in Minneapolis. Like Salgado Araujo, federal spokespeople accused Good of “weaponizing” her car and said ICE agents acted in self-defense, although available footage draws that account into question.

Despite attempts by local prosecutors, no one has been charged in her killing.

Texas political leaders and advocates also drew a comparison to an ICE officer’s fatal shooting last year of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island. The federal agency accused the San Antonio man of intentionally trying to run over an officer as ICE agents helped direct traffic around an accident. Body camera and security footage, later released by DPS, didn’t definitively show Martinez attempting to do so.

“The same thing,” said Johnny Mata, a veteran Houston civil rights advocate who now serves with the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice. “That’s why every public official in an important position in this county, city and surrounding area needs to step forward and say what happened there is not going to happen here.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety investigated Martinez’s shooting and cleared the two ICE agents. A grand jury decided earlier this year not to prosecute the agent who fired through Martinez’s window.

A DPS spokesperson said in a statement that the agency is not investigating this shooting, citing the probe launched by the FBI.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire, a Democrat, said he wasn’t sure if the city could investigate the incident given the federal agency’s jurisdiction.

Local and state law enforcement agencies often investigate a different department’s police shootings.

But it has been rare for local authorities to investigate a federal incident. For example, a ProPublica analysis earlier this year found that local police did not open investigations into six of the 12 shootings by on-duty federal agents that since September have led to the deaths or injuries of citizens and immigrants.

Son learned of father’s death from Facebook

The younger Salgado said that he learned about his father’s death not from law enforcement, but through a social media video an hour after the shooting. The graphic video shows Salgado Araujo moaning in pain as he is on the road while ICE officials appear to be attending to him.

“I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot,” the son said through tears. “I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street, bleeding out.”

His younger brother, named after his father, said that he would never forget that video.

“Hearing him cry out in agony, and you know, seeing that he’d been shot, and they’re not providing any first aid care, they’re just on him, they’re holding him down, letting him bleed like a dog,” he told the Tribune. “I don’t want him to be remembered like that. I want him to be remembered as a hard worker, someone who always pushed for my brothers and my education as a way to make it forward in life and someone who really embodies the American dream.”

His brother said his father was pronounced dead at the same hospital where he, his youngest son and 27-year-old Lorenzo were born, Harris Health’s Ben Taub Hospital.

For most of the 35 years that his father lived in Houston, Salgado said he usually carried out the same daily routine.

“Every evening after work, resting on his porch, listening to music, petting his dog,” Salgado said.

“That’s how I want the world to know my father, not as someone who got shot and killed, but as a family man, a man who understands that good things come to those who put in hard work,” he added through tears.

Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones, whose family immigrated from Mexico, said her “heart breaks for Lorenzo’s family, who will never have him home again. He literally built people’s American dream for decades, and his was ripped away. We must have the truth, we must have answers, and we must have accountability.”

The killing, coming as at least the fourth involving ICE agents since Trump took office again, has resonated across the state and country.

In Austin, for example, civil rights organizations and faith leaders denounced the death Wednesday, urging elected officials to take action against ICE violence in their communities. Another rally in Houston is planned Wednesday night.

“This killing is the direct result of the militarization of our communities,” Mario Gaona with the Party for Socialism and Liberation said at a downtown Austin press conference. “The terror and corruption have to stop. $30 billion in taxpayer money this year has been funneled into this deportation machine.”

For Salgado Araujo’s sons, the death of their father has not only ripped apart their family, but made them question their concept of justice and being an American.

Their father is dead and their uncle — who the family said also has no criminal record — has decided to return to Mexico from ICE detention. The other two passengers in the car are also going back to Mexico, the sons said.

“To have been killed by our own federal government, aided by federal policies that are deliberate choices, just makes me so angry,” Lorenzo Salgado told the Tribune. “Especially being in D.C., just seeing the monuments over the weekend filled me with amazing pride.”

Now, he asked, “how can we be proud of our country?”

Alex Nguyen, Uriel Garcia and Alejandro Santos Cid contributed to this story.