Mexico will press for criminal charges to be brought in the United States over the deaths of Mexican immigrants amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, officials said on Thursday.
At least 17 Mexican citizens have died while held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or during federal raids since Trump returned to the White House last year, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco said.
The most recent case was on Tuesday, when 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado was shot dead by an ICE agent while in his work truck in Houston.
The US government has said that the agent fired in “self-defence” after Salgado, who had lived and worked in the United States for over 30 years, attempted to evade arrest and “weaponised his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.”
Salgado is believed to be the first person shot and killed by federal immigration agents since two Americans were gunned down in Minneapolis in January, sparking protests.
Velasco, speaking at Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, vowed to skip “the diplomatic sphere and go directly to prosecutors in the United States.”
Sheinbaum, for her part, said that she will deliver a “request to private businesses overseeing these detention centres, requesting them to respect the human rights of Mexicans.”
