1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

As your constituent, I am writing to demand immediate congressional action to halt a systemic crisis of ICE violence. I should not have to write this letter twice in one week — but here we are. Six days ago, ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas. This morning, ICE agents shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine. These are not isolated incidents. Since President Trump's inauguration, at least eight people have been fatally shot by ICE or CBP agents in the field. The political pressure from those killings caused DHS to temporarily draw down enhanced enforcement in Maine earlier this year. Then they came back. This morning, they killed someone again. In none of these incidents were agents wearing body cameras. This is not a string of isolated incidents. It is a systemic failure of training, vetting, direction and use-of-force oversight — and Congress is funding it. Let me be direct about the legal principle at stake. ICE does not have the authority to shoot people for fleeing a vehicle stop. Standard law enforcement use-of-force doctrine — which ICE is required to follow — permits lethal force only when there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to officers or bystanders. Fleeing is NOT an imminent threat. Eyewitness accounts describe an unmarked vehicle and plainclothes agents — a situation any reasonable person might perceive as a violent threat rather than a lawful arrest. DHS described the victim as having "weaponized" his vehicle by attempting to flee. That is not a legal standard for lethal force. It is a post-hoc justification for shooting someone who did what any of us would do when attacked by a stranger - get out of there. It does not matter if a person is a US citizen, legally authorized to work, or undocumented. ICE does not have the authority to shoot people in the street for trying to escape a situation that looked, to any reasonable person, like a violent ambush. That principle applies regardless of who is in the vehicle. And in this case, the man killed was not even the target of the warrant. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed this directly to Senator Angus King. The Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition confirmed the victim was legally authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number. ICE killed the wrong man — a man with every legal right to be in Maine — and no agent was wearing a body camera to record how it happened. I demand three immediate actions: 1. Launch a congressional investigation into ICE use-of-force incidents, training standards, and vetting practices for all agents operating in the field. 2. Pass legislation requiring active body cameras during all ICE field operations, with automatic funding termination for any operation where cameras are disabled or absent. 3. Condition all future ICE funding on compliance with standard federal law enforcement use-of-force doctrine, with independent oversight of all civilian deaths. ICE is killing people. Congress is funding it. I expect you to stop.