CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Roaming Charges: The American Mirror

Still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror.

“The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.” – Roberto Bolaño

“The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.”

ICE has killed again. This time in Houston.

Once again, ICE shot and killed someone in their car.

Once again, ICE claims the shooting was justified. That ICE agents feared for their lives. That the person they shot had a weapon.

The weapon? A car. The car they were driving when they were pulled over for no reason other than how they looked.

But they looked like you or me or your neighbor.

They were stopped and shot for no other reason than suspicion. Suspicion that they didn’t belong here. Here where they lived. Here where their families lived.

Once again, ICE blamed the victim before the blood of the victim had even dried.

Once again, the FBI is on the case. Not to investigate the shooting or the shooters, but the victim’s alleged assault on the federal officials who killed him.

And once again, the Trump Justice Department blocked local law enforcement and prosecutors from investigating a homicide on their own streets. The streets of Houston, Texas, a city of 2.5 million people, the fourth largest in the United States.

We’ve seen it before. We’ll see it again. We’re not numb to it, exactly. But we’re not shocked, either. We’re no longer even surprised. Another civilian killed on the street by government agents. Another fishing boat blown out of the water in the Caribbean. Another school smart-bombed. Few even ask why anymore, as if the question answers itself.

But imagine if you recognized the person being shot. What if you knew the person being killed? Knew them well. What if you knew them so well that you could tell who they were by the sound of their dying voice? What if the person you saw and heard being killed by ICE was your father? Because that’s what happened in Houston.

“I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot,” said Lorenzo Salgado Jr. “I recognized him immediately—not from his appearance, but from his voice crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out.”

On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was on his way to work, much the same way he’d done every day for the last 35 years, in Magnolia Park, Houston’s historic Mexican-American neighborhood. The community where 52-year-old Lorenzo had lived since he came to the US at the age of 17. The community where Lorenzo raised his family and started and grew his own construction business. The community where Lorenzo had built his own house with his own hands. The community where Lorenzo still lived with his wife and his dog.

Lorenzo was following his daily routine. He got up before dawn. He ate his breakfast. He drank his coffee. And then he drove off to pick up his construction crew and take them to the day’s job site. On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo had three workers with him, including his brother. Then they were pulled over by ICE.

ICE had been making raids in Magnolia Park for the past few weeks, residents said. They had harassed day laborers and restaurant workers. They were pulling over people in their cars, hoping to meet their daily quotas and get their bonuses. It didn’t matter if the arrests stuck or even if they were legal. ICE operates beyond the law.

ICE hasn’t explained why it pulled over Lorenzo Salgado. They just said he was in the country illegally. But he wasn’t hiding out. He had gone through the legal process of applying for a work permit. If ICE wanted him, they knew where to find him.

By all accounts, Lorenzo wasn’t speeding. He hadn’t run a stop sign. His tags were up to date. His brake lights worked.

So why did ICE light him up?

Because he appeared to be easy pickings. Four Hispanic-looking men in one car. That ICE patrol could meet its daily quota by 7 AM.

Lorenzo Salgado was pulled over and shot in another case of racial profiling run amok. Racial profiling as federal policy, a policy that is allowed under the Kavanaugh Rule, which sanctions such stops as minor inconveniences, under the novel legal theory that no harm will be done if you’re wrongly detained and soon released.

A theory disproved in blood.

ICE claims that Lorenzo tried to evade arrest (for what isn’t clear) by “weaponizing” his car and ramming ICE vehicles, threatening the lives of ICE officers. This is a by-now familiar excuse for ICE shootings, one which has been discredited repeatedly in other shootings, including the murder of Renee Goode in Minneapolis.

ICE has offered no evidence to support this claim in the killing of Lorenzo Salgado. No bodycam footage or officer testimony. Only the word of ICE, a word that is disputed by videotape and witnesses, who say Lorenzo posed no threat to the officers who killed him.

Lorenzo Salgado was shot in the abdomen while sitting in his car. He was pulled from his seat, thrown to the pavement and cuffed. He was left there, groaning in pain, begging for help. His unanswered pleas were later heard by his son on videos posted to Facebook. Lorenzo was pronounced dead at a Houston hospital less than an hour later. He’d bled out on the pavement.

Lorenzo Salgado was the 21st person to be shot by federal immigration agents since Donald Trump recaptured the White House and unleashed a nationwide purge of immigrants, nearly all of whom are law-abiding residents of the US. He is the fifth person to be killed. None of the killers have been brought to justice. Few have even been investigated.

Loreno Salgado wasn’t a gang member. He wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t leeching off the system. he was contributing to it. He was a family man who practiced the work ethic so many Americans claim to admire.

None of those character attributes shielded him from a racist government pogrom that saw only the color of his skin, a color that made him a target for an operation that shoots first and makes up answers later.

“What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours….”

Q: Is the ceasefire over? Is the MOU dead? Trump: I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. Do you know what scum is? They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people. They’re liars. They’re cuckoo.

Q: Is the ceasefire over? Is the MOU dead?

Trump: I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. Do you know what scum is? They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people. They’re liars. They’re cuckoo.

These are the same Iranians, I suppose, that only a day earlier Trump had exalted for being shrewder and more rational than “the first and second regimes” that he’d knocked off in airstrikes. They were even willing, Trump bragged, to let the US have some of their “dust, I call it dust.” He was referring to Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium…I think.

Then, only a couple of hours after calling the Iranian leadership “scum,” “liars,” “cuckoo,” and “sick,” “vicious, violent people,” he said they called him up (on his cell perhaps) to make up. They wanted to deal, Trump said. They wanted it “bad.” But maybe it wasn’t the Islamic Republic of Iran that had called. Perhaps it was the one in Japan.

Meanwhile, the missiles kept flying in both directions. Ships were set aflame in the Strait of Hormuz and the price of oil shot up again.

According to Stephen Semler, one of the few people who can penetrate the fog of Pentagon accounting, Hegseth’s War Department burned through $103 billion in the first 120 days of the Iran war. That’s $860 million per day. 

Trump: “The famous Strait of Hormuz—nobody ever heard of it.” Documentary evidence that almost everyone except Trump had heard of the Strait of Hormuz…

Pete Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson, to NPR: “Under that [Christian nationalist] vision, Wilson told NPR that non-Christians wouldn’t hold public office. Asked whether non-Christians would be allowed to vote, Wilson said, “Yes, probably…” But even Wilson says he is opposed to “forever wars like Iran and Afghanistan,” believes that Congress should declare wars and that the Iran War has gone on and needs to end.

Tom Stevenson in the LRB on Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system:

A week into his second presidential term, Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14186: The Iron Dome for America, calling for “a next-generation missile defence shield”. By the time the US National Security Strategy was published last November, the name had changed, irresistibly, to “a Golden Dome for the American homeland”. Golden Dome is a perfect project for Trump. It looks good on a poster; the technology either doesn’t work or won’t be built, and it promises an illusion of security that in fact undermines it.

A week into his second presidential term, Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14186: The Iron Dome for America, calling for “a next-generation missile defence shield”. By the time the US National Security Strategy was published last November, the name had changed, irresistibly, to “a Golden Dome for the American homeland”. Golden Dome is a perfect project for Trump. It looks good on a poster; the technology either doesn’t work or won’t be built, and it promises an illusion of security that in fact undermines it.

Trump, taking questions from reporters in Ankara while sitting next to  Zelensky, pointed toward the Ukrainian leader and asked reporters, “You have a question for President Putin, please?” A few minutes later, Trump told reporters that “We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier.” The remaining gray matter is eroding quickly now. Mitch McConnell’s EEG may show more brain activity than Trump’s at this point. 

Reporter: Are further troop drawdowns in Europe likely?

Trump: We’re going to see. I was very disappointed with NATO. Frankly, if it weren’t held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very strong leader, a very strong person [i.e, a ruthless dictator], it’s possible that I wouldn’t have attended…We are great friends. Just landing at the airport, to see such a beautiful airport, and to have a building named after me. I was very happy about that.”

An Israeli soldier posted a photo of a Palestinian prisoner, stripped down to his briefs, and tied prone to a cot. He is blindfolded and his hands are cuffed behind him. A broomstick and a square metal pipe are lashed to his back. A caption to the photo in Hebrew reads: “Good morning!”

The Israeli government has confirmed the........

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