U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison ordered U.S. immigration authorities on Monday to release Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego from ICE custody within 48 hours, after previously blocking his deportation in a case tied to the fatal shooting of a Mexican homebuilder by an ICE officer in Houston.
Who Holds the Leash
The order puts a federal judge against the immigration machinery that had kept Rojas Pliego locked up after the July 7 shooting. Ellison agreed with Rojas Pliego’s argument that his detention violates his Fifth Amendment due process rights. That’s the language of the system itself, forced into the open: a witness in a deadly enforcement operation held by the same apparatus that wants to control the story.
Rojas Pliego was one of three passengers in a van driven by Lorenzo Araujo Salgado when Araujo Salgado was shot by an ICE officer during a traffic stop. All three passengers were taken into ICE custody. The state’s reach didn’t stop at the trigger pull. It extended straight into detention.
Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, an attorney for Rojas Pliego, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What the Government Said, and What Witnesses Said Back
The Department of Homeland Security said shortly after the July 7 shooting that Salgado Araujo had "weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer," and that the officer had fired in self-defense. That’s the official script. Clean, defensive, and convenient.
But Rojas Pliego and another passenger wrote in statements submitted in court that the officers were to the sides of their van, never in front or behind it. Rojas Pliego described the government’s account as "a lie." Those statements cut straight through the polished language of enforcement and put the witness accounts against the state’s version of events.
Araujo Salgado was 52 years old and a father of three. His family said he had been living in the U.S. for 35 years and was close to obtaining legal status. He had no known criminal record. His killing was one of at least 10 during immigration enforcement operations since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and it sparked widespread protests in Houston and calls for an independent investigation.
The People Caught Underneath
Rojas Pliego also had entered the U.S. decades ago and had not gained legal status, according to his stepdaughter, Griselda Silva. He has a pending application for a U-Visa, a special legal status for victims of certain crimes who have suffered physical or mental abuse and assisted law enforcement, according to the judge’s order.
If granted, that status would give him a four-year work permit, protection from deportation and a path to a green card. The judge also wrote that if immigration agents seek to detain Rojas Pliego again, they’re required to notify him and hold a pre-detention hearing. Even here, the relief comes wrapped in the same legal machinery that first caged him.
The case sits inside a larger pattern of immigration enforcement operations that have already left at least 10 people dead since the start of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Houston answered with protests and demands for an independent investigation, while the federal system kept moving through custody, deportation threats and courtroom orders. The people closest to the violence are the ones forced to fight for basic breathing room, while the institutions responsible for the violence get to issue statements, file motions and call it order.