The Lorenzo Salgado Araujo ICE shooting took another turn on Friday, when prosecutors in Harris County announced that a substance recovered from the van he was driving contained no illegal drugs at all — undercutting a claim that had shaped much of the early public conversation about his death.

Salgado Araujo, a 51-year-old father of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer during a traffic stop in the Houston area on July 7. The agency has said the encounter became life-threatening. The three men riding in the van with him have disputed that version of events.

What the District Attorney Said

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced the finding publicly on Friday, stating that testing of the seized material came back negative for narcotics or illicit drugs. Prosecutors declined to elaborate, pointing to the ongoing investigation.

The office added that it had informed Salgado Araujo’s relatives directly, saying the family had a right to hear the result.

That announcement matters because of how the allegation entered the record in the first place. Following the shooting, an FBI agent reported seeing small bags in plain view inside the vehicle that appeared consistent with drug packaging and appeared to hold a substance resembling methamphetamine. The bureau used that observation to secure a search warrant for the van.

The Family’s Explanation

Attorneys for the men involved offered a far more ordinary explanation from the start.

Ruby L. Powers, who represents Victor Salgado Araujo — the victim’s brother, who was taken into custody after the shooting — has said the material was believed to be granulated salt. Outdoor laborers across Texas commonly mix salt with lemon and water as a cheap homemade electrolyte drink to get through brutal summer heat on job sites.

Powers said Friday that complete laboratory results, expected within a week, should settle the question definitively. She was sharply critical of how the initial claim reached the public, arguing that an untested allegation was allowed to spread before anyone verified it, and that the damage it caused pulled attention away from the central issue. A lab report, she noted, does not answer for the fact that a man was shot.

David Donatti, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas, described Salgado Araujo as a hardworking man who spent his career building homes for Texas families. He accused the government of prioritizing a convenient story over an honest accounting, and said the family deserves genuine answers.

Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, a lawyer representing two other passengers, called the notion that Salgado Araujo had any involvement with drugs absurd.

ICE directed questions about the finding to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond. The FBI declined to comment.

A Congressional Hearing Hours Earlier

The DA’s announcement landed just hours after the Congressional Hispanic Caucus convened a hearing on the shooting in Houston. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, also attended.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told the panel that drug activity would have been wildly out of character for anyone in the van that morning. He also raised concerns about procedure, saying the decision to unseal the FBI’s search warrant application before a grand jury had reviewed any evidence was something he had never encountered. Unsealing a warrant application on the same day it was signed, he said, was unprecedented in his two decades of work.

Lorenzo Salgado Jr., one of the victim’s sons, testified about the family’s experience over the previous two weeks. He said they had been forced to grieve their father far too early while the official account kept shifting. DHS initially indicated ICE had targeted his father, he said, then later acknowledged he was never the intended target. The agency’s claim that his father weaponized the vehicle, he added, has been contradicted by all three men who were inside it and is not obviously supported by the surveillance footage released so far.

DHS has confirmed that the ICE personnel at the scene were not wearing body cameras. Any security or cellphone recordings that may exist have not been made public.

What Happened at the Stop

Notably, the government has never said drugs were the reason for the stop.

According to attorneys involved in the case, Salgado Araujo was driving himself and three coworkers to a construction site when the confrontation occurred. His family says he had lived in the United States for more than thirty years and was in the process of applying for legal status.

Officials have not stated that agents suspected controlled substances were present when they pulled the van over. DHS has also not indicated that any of the four men had prior criminal records or ties to narcotics.

The department’s position is that Salgado Araujo attempted to evade arrest and tried to ram ICE personnel, prompting an officer to fire in self-defense. Balderas-Ibarra rejects that account entirely, saying his clients maintain that Salgado Araujo never tried to injure anyone and disputing that any agent was actually in danger.

DHS has said agents were searching for a specific individual that morning. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, citing a conversation with ICE’s acting director, has said Salgado Araujo was not the person they were looking for.

The officer who fired has not been publicly identified, and the investigation remains open.

Broader Fallout

The shooting also triggered a brief shift in federal policy. Following this death and a separate fatal incident in Maine within the same week, DHS temporarily halted ICE vehicle stops, according to a current senior official and two former senior officials. President Donald Trump reversed that pause shortly afterward.

For the family, the negative drug test resolves one dispute while leaving the largest one untouched: why a routine drive to a construction site ended with a father of three dead in the road.