Say Their Names: Three Deaths in Eight Days

By Mr. Alvarez | Climate Change Community LLC

On July 7th (see post below), I wrote to you about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a 52-year-old father, a builder of homes, shot and killed by an ICE officer on Canal Street in Houston’s East End on his way to work. I asked every agent, every officer, every official to look in the mirror.

They did not look. They reloaded.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero

On Monday morning, July 13, 2026, shortly after 7:15 a.m., a 26-year-old man named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer at the corner of Hill and Pool streets in Biddeford, Maine — in front of his wife and his three-year-old daughter.

Say his name.

Johan was from Bucaramanga, a city in the Colombian Andes, raised — as his family says — with virtue. He worked two jobs. He made deliveries in a small white sedan to feed his family, the way working people do, the way my people have always done. He had federal work authorization, issued in May 2025, and a Social Security number. He checked in with immigration authorities routinely. He was on his way to work when the shooting happened — just like Lorenzo.

And hear this clearly, because it is confirmed by the Secretary of Homeland Security himself, through Maine’s own senator: Johan was not the target of the operation. ICE was executing a warrant for someone else entirely. The agents were not wearing body cameras — the world’s most lavishly funded enforcement agency, swimming in billions of taxpayer dollars, could not manage a camera. The officer who fired was newly sworn in, hired earlier this year. Security footage from a nearby shop shows Johan’s white Kia rolling slowly in circles at the intersection before agents boxed him in. Then a neighbor heard roughly six shots. Then a wife screaming on the sidewalk. Then a three-year-old girl who will spend the rest of her life without her father.

His father in Colombia said it plainly: “It is a deep pain that they have caused us.” His family is now raising money not for a vacation, not for a lawsuit lottery — but to send his body home to Bucaramanga, so his parents can bury their son.

The Brother We Cannot Yet Name

The very next morning — Tuesday, July 14 — at about 6:42 a.m. in St. Augustine, Florida, ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents descended on a car parked at a Wawa gas station on State Road 16. Four occupants ran. One of them, a 28-year-old Mexican national whose name has not yet been released, ran across the highway in terror and into the path of a tractor-trailer. The truck driver — a working man, no doubt, like the men being hunted — stopped immediately and tried to save him. He died on the pavement.

Officials have not even told us why the agents approached that car. Four men at a gas station before 7 a.m. Where I come from, we know exactly what that is: workers. Lunch pails. A ride to the job site. The same morning ritual Lorenzo was performing. The same one Johan was performing.

Three deaths in eight days. Houston. Biddeford. St. Augustine. All before the morning coffee got cold.

I Am Going to Say What This Looks Like

I am a Latino. I am a Boricua from New York. And I am going to speak plainly, because the moment demands plainness.

When the dead keep having the same skin, the same accents, the same lunch-pail mornings — when a Mexican father, a Colombian father, and a Mexican brother are killed in a single week by the same machinery — you will forgive us for seeing what is in front of our faces. This has, to my eyes, every appearance of a movement that treats brown skin as probable cause. Killing us — or chasing us into the path of trucks — because of the color of our skin, or because we “appear different,” is not law enforcement. It is not order. It is not security. It is unacceptable in the least degree, and I am disgusted, and I am angry, and I will not launder that anger into politeness for anyone’s comfort.

We Latinos are not strong because of pain, death, hurt, or abuse — we are simply used to them. But do not confuse our endurance with consent. We are indignant. We demand absolute respect for our human dignity. We are not animals. And we are not all criminals. Johan had work papers. Lorenzo had 35 years and no record. The man in Florida hadn’t even been accused of anything when he died running for his life.

The Pause Is Not the Point

After Biddeford — after the second body in a week — the Department of Homeland Security ordered ICE to temporarily cease most vehicle stops. Understand what this is and what it is not.

It is an admission. You do not pause a practice that is working. You pause a practice that is killing people.

But it is not accountability. It is a temporary directive, with no timeline, issued under pressure, that leaves untouched the core of the machinery: the unmarked vehicles, the missing body cameras, the freshly hired officers with weapons drawn on delivery drivers, the culture that treats our neighborhoods as hunting grounds. Maine’s own governor, Janet Mills, wrote to Congress this week demanding they act — “not simply to share our grief,” she said, but to require ICE to respect the rule of law. Even she can see that condolences are the cheapest currency in Washington.

A pattern is policy wearing a mask. I said it on July 7th. The mask is slipping faster than they can adjust it.

The Earth Still Has No Walls

And still — still — the deeper truth stands over all of this like the sky itself:

The Earth has no divisions of walls when it comes to the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Wildfire smoke does not check papers. Drought does not respect a border fence. The heat does not ask for a work permit before it kills a roofer or a farmworker. We are in the fight of our species’ life, and this nation is spending its budgets, its energy, and its manhood chasing the very people who pour our concrete, harvest our food, deliver our packages, and build our homes — chasing them into gunfire and into traffic.

Every dollar spent on an unmarked SUV idling outside a Wawa at dawn is a dollar not spent on Adaptive Resiliency. Every young officer trained to fear a white Kia is a young person who could have been trained to harden a grid, restore a wetland, cool a city. We need to evolve if we are going to deal with what is coming for us. History will not be kind to nations that mistook cruelty for strength.

What We Demand — Updated and Underlined

We are not asking for pity. We are demanding what the law, the Constitution, and basic human decency already require:

Full, independent investigations into the killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, and into the death in St. Augustine — not agencies investigating themselves.
Release of all evidence: security footage, dispatch logs, agent identities and training records. And an answer to the simplest question in Florida: why did you approach that car?
A permanent end — not a pause — to unmarked-vehicle stops and enforcement ambushes in our neighborhoods. A working man cannot comply with an authority he cannot identify.
Mandatory body cameras, on and recording, for every agent, every operation. No camera, no operation. Period.
Transparency and due process for every detained passenger and witness. Families deserve to know where their loved ones are.
Respect for the human dignity of every person — documented or not, citizen or not. Dignity is not conferred by paperwork.

What You Can Do Tonight and This Month

Tonight, Wednesday, July 15, at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, join the national movement call hosted by Disappeared in America with Indivisible and partners, to mourn Lorenzo and Johan, hear from their loved ones and Maine organizers, and learn how to act.
Attend or organize a vigil in your community in the coming days — search “vigil” on the Indivisible or Disappeared in America events pages.
Mark July 25 — a national day of action and accountability. Bring your neighbors. Bring your congregation. Bring your tribe.
Support Johan’s family. A community-verified fund is helping cover legal costs, funeral expenses, and the repatriation of his body to his parents in Colombia. It had raised over $100,000 within a day — because ordinary people are not confused about what is right.

This Does Not Last Forever

I told you on July 7th and I tell you again, with three names now instead of one: things like this do not last forever. History shows — over and over, from every empire that ever mistook a badge for a blank check — that non-violent accountability always follows. Not revenge. Accountability. Courts. Records. Testimony. Memory. The long, patient, unbreakable rhythm of a people who refuse to be erased.

We move like the clave: steady, relentless, alive. Never rushing. Never surrendering the beat.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was a husband, a father, a builder of homes.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was a husband, a father, a young man of virtue who worked two jobs.

Our brother in St. Augustine was somebody’s son, and we will learn his name, and we will say it too.

Say their names. And then look in the mirror.

Que descansen en poder, hermanos.

Compiled & Mr. Alvarez’s Thoughts | AI Enhanced