ICE Kills and Lies

Here are five stories I wanted to share from my surfing around the internet.

Indeed. We will win. I’m glad you’re here.

#1: ICE Kills Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

• ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They want you to be apathetic. Don’t be. (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gift Link to Article Made Possible by Paid Subscribers)
• Texas ICE Killing Darkens: Rep Says Witnesses Pressured to Self-Deport (Greg Sargent, The New Republic, Link to Article)
• The Coverup Unravels (Bill Kristol, The Bulwark, Gift Link to Article Made Possible by Paid Subscribers)
• July 10 Friday Roundup (Andrea Pitzer, Degenerate Art, Link to Article)

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo left for work on Tuesday morning, but ICE agents killed him before he could arrive. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch provides the details:

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo woke up at 5 a.m. Tuesday and started his day like almost every other one for the last 35 years since he came to Houston from Mexico and built his own American dream brick by brick — sending his three sons to top universities on the foundation he’d constructed through years of backbreaking labor.

His wife also got up to make him a hearty meal before he put on his work boots, fired up his van, and picked up three coworkers in Houston’s heavily Latino East End to build new homes on the city’s outskirts. But it proved to be Salgado’s last drive.

Just a short time later, the 52-year-old Salgado was lying face down outside of his van on a city sidewalk, surrounded by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as blood poured from a bullet wound on the right side of his stomach. He was recorded screaming in pain: “Help me! They shot me! … ¡Me están matando!”

Translation: “They are killing me!”

He died a short time later in a nearby hospital. ICE said the fatal shooting occurred after officers tried to arrest Salgado in what it called “a targeted enforcement operation” — even though Salgado apparently had no criminal record and for more than a year had been steadily making progress toward securing a work permit that would resolve his immigration status.

It was a case of mistaken identity. The agents were trying to capture someone else. Not that murdering the person they were seeking would have been justifiable under these circumstances.

The Department of Homeland Security tried the same “weaponized his automobile” story that’s been proven false in other killings and shootings. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras. ICE even tried to get three witnesses to self-deport before they could give statements.

As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports:

The three men are Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, and two workers, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego, [CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens Juan] Proaño told TNR. Family members who are in touch with them confirmed the pressure to sign self-deportation orders, Proaño says, adding that some of the men may be inclined to do so to avoid longer-term detention.

“We want full public disclosure of the eyewitness accounts of what actually happened on the day that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed,” Proaño said. The pressure to self-deport, Proaño added, looks like “an effort by DHS to get rid of the only eyewitnesses to what happened.” Asked for comment, ICE emailed a statement that didn’t address the three men’s status and referred questions to the FBI.

ICE, like all law enforcement agencies, does not deserve any benefit of the doubt here. The burden should be on them to prove that they are sharing accurate information and not trying to cover up how ICE agents killed Salgado Araujo.

Because, as The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol writes, the potential cover-up by ICE began soon after the shooting.

First we had the totally unsubstantiated ICE claim—so often a lie when we’ve heard it from ICE in the past—that Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle.” And we had the normal ICE stonewalling—a refusal to release any actual information about what happened or to cooperate with local law enforcement.

Then we learned that the ICE officers had taken Lorenzo’s personal property from him, including his wallet and phone, before putting him in the ambulance to a hospital. Which is why he was admitted as a John Doe and the hospital couldn’t notify his family that he was there. But the indecency here isn’t the point. Buying time to organize a coverup was.

Kristol later asks Democratic Members of Congress to make their cooperation on any issue be “contingent on getting at the truth of what happened here, and on some accountability for this atrocity.”

Absolutely. The time to start demanding this is now. Yes, Democrats have to wait until after the election—if they win a majority in one or both chambers—to start a formal investigation. But they can make it an issue now. They can make Trump Republicans pay a price for allowing the Department of Homeland Security to work as Stephen Miller directs.

The stakes are high. As Andrea Pitzer, the historian of concentration camps, explained in her newsletter today:

As Asawin Suebsaeng wrote for Zeteo, the public now seems to be paying less attention to ICE arrests and detention. People may feel that the federal government has ratcheted down its persecution since the removal of Kristi Noem and the forced retirement of Gregory Bovino from Border Patrol. But Trump’s minions haven’t let up on their ethnic purges nationwide. In reality, the government is moving as quickly as it can to make arrests on the ground, exposing vulnerable people to harm and even death.

Trump and his allies may already realize that they are running out of time in their project of terrorizing immigrants and reshaping the racial makeup of the U.S. And I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that history shows that the administration will keep attempting to spark pogroms, putting people in camps, and even killing people, in targeted ways and through malicious incompetence. By the time a country reaches this fever pitch of using mass detention without trial as a weapon, it typically won’t cease doing so unless it is actively stopped—either by its own people or by outside pressure.

We, the people, must demand it stop. We must demand that our elected officials and candidates explain how they will do all they can to stop these atrocities.

#2: Criminalizing Protests

• The Next Step in Criminalizing ICE Protests Is Here (Spencer Ackerman, Forever Wars, Link to Article)
• The ‘Minneapolis 15’ ICE-protester indictments are meant to shut you up (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gift Link Made Possibly By Paying Subscribers)

We must not allow the weaponization of the Department of Justice to stop our protests against the Trump regime’s authoritarian and illegal actions.

The Broadview 6 case in Chicago demonstrated how DOJ attorneys are engaging in misconduct with grand juries to secure indictments.

The Minneapolis 15 indictments indicate how the Trump regime wants to redefine protests against it as a criminal conspiracy.

As Spencer Ackerman explains in Forever Wars:

Constructing a Signal group chat and alerting those on it to the size of a police presence around an ICE staging ground. Asking for contributions to a mutual aid fund. Writing an article for CrimethInc. that reported on a confrontation between ICE and protesters.

These are the alleged "overt acts" of a conspiracy of "force, intimidation and threats" to impede ICE activity in Minnesota, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. Prosecutors charged 15 people and say others may soon be added. FOREVER WARS has uploaded the indictment here, so you can read it for yourself, outside the PACER legal-database's firewall.

The indictment is full of descriptions of constitutionally protected acts. It also spends considerable time critiquing the political views of the accused.

I agree with the legal analysts who see these indictments as prosecutorial misconduct.

Even if they are eventually exonerated, the indictment will have a negative impact on the lives of the Minneapolis 15. There is a major financial cost. The uncertainty about what is going to happen creates mental stress and anxiety.

And as The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch explains, that’s part of the point of this Trump regime misconduct.

Although the indictments are a living hell for the Minneapolis 15, the real target here is regular American folks like you — citizens who aren’t normally inclined to protest the government, but are starting to wonder what to do as the regime and its 80-year-old and increasingly out-of-touch leader spiral out of control.

Before you even dare venture out to a church meeting where they pass out whistles and teach you how to warn your neighbors that masked ICE agents are snatching people off the streets, they want to plant seeds of doubt. Am I risking my freedom, and my family, just for posting something in a Signal or WhatsApp chat?

They want you to be terrified, and on some level you should be afraid, not just of what the government is doing but why they are doing this now. Trump was already nearing record-low approval numbers before this week’s humiliating surrender deal aimed at ending the president’s foolhardy war of choice with Iran. The near inevitability of a Democratic House in 2027 all but guarantees Trump’s next impeachment and two years of political hell to end his 47th presidency.

<snip>

Criminalizing dissent isn’t a sideshow. It’s central to the plan. They want to stop you from taking to the streets in massive numbers if and when they take illegal actions to keep the Republican Party in power. They are using these bogus indictments to lay the foundation for the solution that Vice President JD Vance proposed for Minneapolis back in January — to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in tanks.

Every person needs to decide how much risk they can tolerate. But I hope many people are ready and willing to step out to protest the Trump regime’s anti-Constitutional actions. I also hope many more people will vote this fall than expected.

The best way to beat voter suppression efforts after they are implemented is through turnout. Turnout beats back lies. Turnout makes it harder to steal elections.

Protests help make clear that people are not alone in opposing what the Trump MAGA Republicans are doing to our nation.

#3: Send Project 2029 Back to the Editors

• Exclusive: A First Look at the Dems’ Version of Project 2025 (Laura Egan, The Opposition, Link to Article)
• Don't Call It Project 2029 If It's Not A Fighting Document (Brian Beutler, Off Message, Link to Article)
• What Exactly Should a Project 2029 Be? (Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)

We are beginning to see what the Democratic Party’s policy wonks think should be the party’s priorities in preparation for the 2028 presidential election.

I have concerns. But not about the policies.

As The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan writes:

The Democratic policy group Project 2029 is releasing an initial set of proposals in hopes of shaping the fast-approaching presidential primary campaign and guiding leaders on how they might earn back voter trust. It plans to roll out dozens of more ideas on domestic and foreign policy over the next year, all of which the group eventually intends to turn into a book that will be published as a sort of governing blueprint for Democrats.

A preview of the first policy proposals being released, shared exclusively with The Bulwark, outline an anti-corporate, Big Tech–skeptical approach to the modern economy, with a particular emphasis on parenting and families.

“It’s very clear for many people what Democrats are against,” said Chad Maisel, Project 2029’s executive director. “What people are not clear on is what we are for and what we would do if and when we have our next governing moment. We see Project 2029 as answering that question of: What would we do? What would we fight for? How would we solve problems?”

Okay. Yeah, this is part of the necessary conversation Democrats need to have. Solving problems is great! There are many voters who are voting for change every election because they are not seeing results that improve their lives.

But I join those who worry that generating a list of policy ideas is missing a key part of the challenge facing the Democratic Party: what the Trump regime has done—and continues doing—to our governing institutions.

As Off Message’s Brian Beutler explains:

The post-Trump era will not be a blank canvas for policy makers. To be clear, it will demand a great deal of legislating, bureaucratic deftness, technical knowhow, and creativity. Assembling a new government will need to be undertaken with an eye toward avoiding obvious pitfalls, which will of course place policy expertise at a premium.

But the governing machinery all these operatives expect to be awaiting them will be broken. The challenge will be to get a new apparatus up and running quickly, which will in turn require blowing through obstacles—the procedural ones that have been there all along, and the landmines that will be strewn about by saboteurs.

A hodgepodge of detailed policy objectives is not responsive to that challenge. Not even if the policies tick all the right interest-group and message-testing boxes.

Absolutely. Where is the acknowledgment that eliminating the filibuster is required to pass this agenda? That we must add seats to the Supreme Court—as a minimum reform—to ensure the conservative activists dressed in black robes don’t roll it all back?

Even if we aren’t fully authoritarian yet, the Trump regime has altered how our government works.

As Josh Marshall explains at Talking Points Memo, any plan that does not address this fact as a first-order priority isn’t realistic.

If you look at the challenges faced today by Democrats, their reputational problems, lack of trust not only by unattached voters but by their own partisans, the biggest problem is that people think they are weak, their espousal of values doesn’t match their willingness to fight for those values and goals. At the most basic level, they don’t have a strong understanding of political power and how to use it. A Project 2029 should be mostly a blueprint for how to use trifecta power to the maximum extent possible by law and constitution to make thoroughgoing structural changes to the federal government to buttress against authoritarian fascist attack. Reinforcing the structures of civic democracy is a central part of that. To use a sports analogy, that doesn’t mean running good plays. It means reshaping the entire playing field. They’re not the same thing. That means starting as the sine qua non with things like ending the Senate filibuster and reforming the Supreme Court. But those are only the start. Those are the ones that make all the other reform and structural changes possible. They are also the talismans of seriousness. Because if you’re not willing to tackle those, you’re not any kind of player or even on the field.

We cannot emphasize that point enough going forward.

#4: Bye, Alan Greenspan!

• Speak Ill of the Dead—Early and Often, Please. (Rick Perlstein, Rickipedia, Link to Article)

The historian and author Rick Perlstein has written a series of remarkable books about the rise of the conservative movement. Starting with the rise of Goldwater and running through the Reagan administration, his four-book series (Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland) is a must-read for anyone who wants to see how the conservative and right-wing religious movements came together and changed our nation (derogatory).

Perlstein has just finished the manuscript of his next book, The Infernal Triangle: How America Got This Way, which will focus on the 2000s and 2010s.

When former Federal Reserve Chair (and Ayn Rand friend) Alan Greenspan passed away in late June, Perlstein did a great service by sharing excerpts from this new book focused on the former Federal Reserve chair. They provide a necessary corrective about his record, which we must remember culminated in a series of financial crises.

As Perlstein shares:

Start with the end Bill Clinton’s first term, after, first, Orange County, California went bankrupt, then a giant hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management that had been leveraged at a ratio of 250-to-one, almost went bankrupt—until a consortium of fourteen banks spent $3.6 billion to prop it up, lest a contagion of failures follow among the institutions that loaned them the money to achieve that leverage in the first place. The reason for these catastrophes was bad bets on derivatives, a type of investment future that was, intentionally, unregulated. In 1996, the federal official responsible for regulating investment futures, Brooksley Born, proposed to begin the processs of regulating them; and the Federal Reserve Chairman went apeshit.

“Economics,” he thundered at one meeting, “should inform these decisions”—not politics; and that Born was “trying induce us to do things that will undercut the system that we are beholden to serve.” Then, he called her to lunch. “Well, Brooksley,” Federal Reserve chair said, “I guess you and I will never agree about fraud.” She asked why. He replied, “you think there should be laws against it.”

Perlstein shares how Greenspan’s ideology helped to create the dot-com bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis that created the Great Recession. Later, he admitted that he was mistaken that a housing bubble was impossible. He was also dismayed to realize that banks were not best positioned to protect against fraud on their own.

Perlstein explains how the story of Alan Greenspan fits into the thesis of his book:

The theme of my book coming out next year—subtitle: “How America Got This Way”—is that, given decade after decade of failures to serve and protect the public from elite institutional, in which the individuals most responsible were inalterably protected from any consequences for all they had done: well how could America have not turned out any other way? May Exhibit A, Alan Greenspan, forever rot in the sub-, sub-, subprime depths of hell.

I am excited to read his book. And I hope we learn the lesson Perlstein mentions in the paragraph above.

When the Trump regime ends, we must not make the mistake of failing to hold the people and institutions who broke the law and violated the Constitution accountable.

#5: The Trillionaire Kill Chain

• Is Elon Musk A Trillionaire Right Now? (Jason Sattler, LOLGOP Studios, Link to Article)

On Saturday, July 11, the answer is HELL, NO.

I prefer that answer when I check the website.

This website is part of Jason Sattler’s (known online as LOLGOP) Trillionaire Kill Chain project. He is working on a limited documentary and podcast to explain the public policy decisions over the past 50 years that allowed someone like Elon Musk to have the ability to buy the 2024 presidential election (with $291 million in campaign spending). As Sattler writes:

[Elon Musk] grew up in apartheid South Africa. He moved here and got rich on government contracts, government subsidies, a government internet. He fathered at least fourteen children while publicly lamenting that the wrong people aren't having enough babies. He looked at a multiracial democracy and saw a problem.

The government said it needed to look at his “self-driving” cars. His labor practices. His rockets. A wealth tax was on the table. A Black woman was in the executive branch. He decided it could not be allowed to stand.

$44 billion bought Twitter and restored the candidate banned for inciting an insurrection. Then $291 million. Muslim voters in Michigan got ads praising Harris's support for Israel. Their Jewish neighbors got the opposite. Same sender. Same week. The target wasn't their vote. It was their faith that voting changes anything.

Then Musk was given power by Trump through DOGE and took actions (like sending USAID to the woodchipper) that will lead to millions of deaths around the world.

Sattler rightly believes that in-person communications and community building can defeat Musk and his money. Hungary’s opposition just demonstrated how that works by defeating Victor Orbán.

Have fun looking at Musk losing his trillionaire status. Then check the rest of the website to learn more about the documentary project and how we can keep the oligarchs from winning again.

Useful Websites and Information Trackers
I Wanted to Share

Election Data

• 2026 Election Calendar (The Downballot, Link to Article)
• Ultimate Data Guide (The Downballot, Link to Article)

Iran War Consequences

• Strait of Hormuz Shipping Trackers (hormuztracker.com | hormuzstraitmonitor.com)

Trump Regime Authoritarianism

• Trump Action Tracker (Making Sense of US Politics, Link to Article)
• Executive Watch [Trump Abuses of Power] (Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, The Unpopulist, Link to Article)
• ICE Warehouse Tracker (Project Salt Box, Link to Article)

Trump Regime Corruption

• Kleptocracy Tracker Timeline (Anne Applebaum, SNF Agora Institute, Link to Article)

Follow me on BlueSky to see the stories I’m finding and the stories I’m sharing throughout the day.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

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