Immigration enforcement deaths demand answers

Dear Editor,

America is witnessing something deeply alarming: immigrant fathers are being killed by government agents tasked with enforcing civil immigration laws.

On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a husband and father, was shot and killed by ICE agents while on his way to work in Houston, Tex. Less than a week later, 26-year-old husband and father Johan Sebastian Guerrero was fatally shot by immigration agents in Biddeford, Maine, in front of his wife and toddler. These are not isolated statistics. They are human beings who were violently gunned down, whose families will never be whole again.

Lorenzo’s children remember their father as a hardworking man who devoted his life to providing for his family. That story is familiar across America. Immigrant parents work long hours, pay taxes, raise children and strengthen the communities they call home – including ours. Their legacy is sacrifice, resilience and the strength and hope to seek a better future.

What makes these deaths especially disturbing is that the people targeted were not accused of any crime. Being undocumented is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. Yet we increasingly see immigration enforcement carried out with the kind of force one would expect in the pursuit of dangerous killers. When fathers are shot dead on their way to work or in front of their children, something has gone terribly wrong.

Every person deserves due process, dignity and the basic right to return home safely to their family. We should be outraged that wives are becoming widows and children are becoming fatherless in the name of enforcing civil immigration law. And we should demand answers whenever lethal force is used by the government against unarmed people who posed no threat.

There must be an independent investigation into these killings, transparency and judicial procedure regarding the actions of the agents involved, protection for those detained alongside Lorenzo, including his brother, and Congressional hearings to determine why deadly force was used and why taxpayer dollars are funding blatant abuses of power.

Silence is complicity. If we do not speak out when immigrant families are torn apart by violence and killing, we surrender the very principles of justice and humanity that we claim to uphold.

-Marianne Delaney, Bedford