Substance FBI agent saw in van of man fatally shot by ICE in Houston was salt, family attorney says

The FBI filed a search warrant application for the van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo , a father of three who was killed by ICE during a traffic stop in Texas last week, saying an agent found small bags in the vehicle he believed could contain drugs. But the attorney for the Salgado Araujo family said Thursday the substance was salt that outdoor workers mixed with lemon and water to combat the Texas heat.

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The FBI declined to comment to NBC News on whether the agency has executed the search warrant and whether any of the seized items tested positive for illegal drugs.

“Our understanding is that this was granulated salt, which is paired with lemon and water as a homemade electrolyte mix used by outdoor workers in extreme Texas heat, not methamphetamine or any other illicit substance,” attorney Ruby L. Powers, who represents Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was taken into custody following the shooting, said in a statement.

“A search warrant does not equate to guilt,” Powers said. “An unidentified substance is not a confirmed narcotic.”

Powers said she was requesting that the substance be tested immediately “so that their names can be cleared.” She is also calling for Salgado Araujo’s brother to be released from ICE custody.

The top prosecutor in Houston and a group advocating for the man’s family have criticized the FBI’s unusual move, saying they do not believe there were drugs in the car and the search warrant does not change the facts of the fatal shooting.

Salgado Araujo was in the van with three others last Tuesday morning en route to a construction jobsite in Houston when ICE agents stopped the vehicle. Salgado Araujo was not the intended target of the immigration agents, the Department of Homeland Security said. The agents attempted to arrest him and shot Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, killing him.

The Department of Homeland Security has said Salgado Araujo was in the country illegally and attempted to run over agents, but has not provided evidence of its claims.

The FBI’s Houston office previously stated it was called to the scene after the shooting to investigate the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.

The federal search warrant application, which was filed Tuesday and signed by a judge, said an FBI agent who was outside the van looked inside and saw “several plastic bags” that he observed contained “a white crystal-like substance.” Photos attached with the application show several clear plastic bags with an unidentifiable substance strewn among construction materials like carpenter pencils.

The FBI agent believed the substance and the bags were “consistent with how users of drugs package controlled substances for distribution, manufacturing, and possession,” and were consistent with potential methamphetamine, according to the search warrant application.

The government has not said the ICE agents suspected any controlled substances in the vehicle when they pursued Salgado Araujo. DHS also has not indicated that he or the others in the van had any prior criminal history or history with controlled substances.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News Thursday that “based on what we’ve learned about the passengers, it’s inconsistent that drugs were in the van.”

Teare told CNN earlier Thursday that the federal unsealing of the search warrant application “is truly unique in my 20 years of doing this.”

“That is not something that we see the FBI or any federal agency do, especially prior to any presentation of a grand jury,” he told the network.

“My understanding is that this substance is being tested by the FBI, either today or in the next few days,” he said. “It’s so important to the public that those results be shared immediately.”

Teare said that regardless, those test results would have “no bearing whatsoever” on whether the deadly use of force against Salgado Araujo was justified.

“This is a red herring that really has no bearing on a death investigation,” he said.

The FBI’s Houston office referred questions related to the search warrant to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, which said it did not have additional information to provide at this time.

David Cruz, national communications director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the civil rights organizations advocating for Salgado Araujo’s family, said they believe the FBI search warrant is just one element in a broader effort from authorities to blame Salgado Araujo for his death “and not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed him.”

“It is sad to see that narrative,” Cruz told NBC News in a phone interview Thursday. “To try and create a picture of a criminal after he was shot in cold blood, unarmed, on his way to work, is shameful, but it’s not surprising.”

Regardless of what the FBI determines about the evidence upon searching, “that has nothing to do with the actions that happened in those fatal moments of that encounter last week,” Cruz said, at the hands of an “ICE officer wearing no body cam, whom we are asked to believe without question.”’

ICE referred questions about the search warrant to FBI Houston and the attorney general’s office, and questions about use of force to DHS’ Office of Inspector General.

Last week, DHS said after the fatal shooting that, according to information it received, Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle, refused to follow verbal commands and “weaponized” his vehicle, leading an officer to shoot him “in self-defense.”

Two of the men who were in the car with Salgado Araujo told their lawyer that “at no point was there ever an agent standing in front of the vehicle, nor was an agent ever placed in the line of danger,” their attorney, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, said at a news conference last week.

Ronaldo Salgado mourned his father’s death on Facebook, calling him “a hardworking Mexican man.”

“My father has been in this country for nearly 35 years, working in construction to provide for myself, my two brothers, and my mother,” Ronaldo Salgado wrote . “He was in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process. He was on his way to work, picking up his workers. My father did not deserve this.”

DHS’ Office of Inspector General, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers are investigating the fatal shooting in Houston.

Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jason Pack, who worked as an agent in the field for many years and reviewed the search warrant application, said a federal judge signed it, allowing the FBI to search the vehicle. Pack said the affidavit was going to be released to the public and what was different in this case, “isn’t the law. It’s the speed and the choice to push it out fast, while the story’s still hot.”

“The plain truth is that the affidavit only has to contain what’s needed to get that one warrant signed,” he said. “The agent flat out says he didn’t put everything he knows in there. So it’s accurate and it’s incomplete at the same time.”

Salgado Araujo’s shooting came less than a week before the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by ICE in Main e. Durán was also not the intended target of the immigration agents and both he and Salgado Araujo were killed during traffic stops.