‘I Woke Up With Three Weapons Drawn on Me’
A man from the Fayetteville area spoke out against local law enforcement cooperating with ICE at the La Grange City Council meeting Monday night, Aug. 10.
“On March 2 of this year, I was woken up at 5 a.m. with three weapons drawn on me at my front door,” said Juan Aguado. “I was forced to step out of my home, and my father was taken away by ICE in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t contact him for two days. He is safe now, luckily. He is in Mexico.
“We know what happened with Alex Pretti and Renee Good,” Aguado went on to say. “They were bystanders that were unfortunately killed during a detainee detention. Or what happened with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo over in Houston recently, a detainee who was murdered.”
Pretti was a nurse in Minnesota who was shot and killed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers during an encounter on Jan. 24. Good was shot and killed during an operation in Minnesota conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Jan. 7 Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston on July 7.
The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office signed a participation agreement with ICE over a year ago. The City of La Grange and the City of Schulenburg both recently signed similar agreements to allow their police departments to participate in federal immigration enforcement. State law already requires local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. However, the ICE agreements provide a wealth of grant funding through the federal 287(g) program.
“What is the city going to do to ensure the safety of the people being detained or the civilians and citizens that live in this town?” Aguado said.
Aguado spoke during the public participation period at Monday’s City Council meeting. According to state law, no one from the City is required to respond to comments made by the public that are not part of an item listed in the meeting agenda.
After the meeting, Aguado told the Record that his father, Juan Aguado Montoya, was an undocumented immigrant and had been arrested twice for driving while intoxicated. Aguado said he is concerned about local law enforcement winding up in a situation like the ones involving Pretti, Good and Salgado Araujo.
Those three cases have drawn a lot of debate over whether shootings were justified. Pretti was carrying a handgun during his encounter with law enforcement. ICE said Good tried to run over an officer in a vehicle. In the latest case out of Houston, ICE claims Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer, resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”
La Grange Police Chief David Gilbreath and Schulenburg Police Chief Troy Brenek have both said their officers would work with ICE agents in operations outside their city limits.
“I just want to make sure that the City of La Grange knows that these kinds of things are happening,” Aguado said. “I’m sure that we do not want that kind of issue here. We don’t want another Renee Good here or anyone to be injured during this.
“I just wanted to also emphasize that safety of everybody should be prioritized over detention,” Aguado said.