A federal agent shot and killed a man from Mexico during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday morning, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.
The director said that the man had tried to run down the officer who opened fire, though no evidence was immediately provided to support that account.
ICE agents stopped a vehicle around 6:50 a.m. and tried to arrest the driver, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, according to David Venturella, the agency’s acting director. Mr. Venturella described Mr. Araujo as an “illegal alien” but did not say why he was being sought.
His statement said that the driver had “weaponized his vehicle” and tried to run over the agent, who fired at him. Rustin Rawlings, a spokesman for the Houston Fire Department, said that Mr. Araujo was shot in his abdomen. Mr. Araujo was taken to a hospital and died.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office is leading an investigation into the agent-involved shooting. The F.B.I.’s Houston office will focus its investigation into an alleged assault on a federal law enforcement officer.
Several federal law enforcement accounts of shootings by immigration agents this year have since been contradicted by video evidence. They include two fatal shootings in Minneapolis during a crackdown in January, and another in which video undermined the account of an ICE agent, resulting in dropped charges against the man who was shot.
Reached by phone on Tuesday night, Mr. Araujo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, said his father was “a hard-working man who was trying to obtain his work permit the right way to provide for his family.”
Mr. Salgado said the family planned to say more on Wednesday morning at a news conference.
The shooting in Houston is part of a growing number of altercations between people in cars and federal agents involved in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
About 20 people have been shot in their cars, some of them fatally. In most cases, federal officials have said that the actions were justified because the vehicles had been “weaponized” and the agents’ lives were in danger.
Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said his organization is calling for an independent investigation into the shooting by the local authorities.
Mr. Proaño called the government’s account “a template.”
“We don’t trust ICE, and we don’t trust the F.B.I. to be responsible enough or open or transparent enough with what happened today,” he said.
A vigil to remember Mr. Salgado is planned for Wednesday night.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research. Maria Jimenez Moya contributed reporting from Houston.
