Dave Matthews has spoken out against the recent killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a federal immigration officer.
Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three children, was an undocumented Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. He was shot dead by an ICE agent during a traffic stop on Tuesday morning in Houston, in circumstances which have been disputed by witnesses.
Singer-songwriter Matthews, 59, was performing in Camden, New Jersey on Friday when he addressed the incident from the stage.
In fan-shot footage, Matthews can he heard saying: “I don’t know why we let people make excuses for why we should kill each other. There’s always reasons that we should kill each other. We tell our children to use their words, but then when they grow up they wonder what’s wrong with us. I don’t know why we lost our way. Maybe we’ve always been like this, we just got better at making things that can kill each other.”
He continued: “Anyway, I wanted to say his name. I wrote it down, so I didn’t forget it. This young man, well, old man, but we’re all young. This father and grandfather who was murdered by ICE in Houston, Texas. Then they say he’s not even the guy they were looking for! Well then, don’t pull the trigger you assholes! So I just want to say, I’m sorry if that language offends his family or his friends or his community, but it just makes me mad. Anyway, I want to send this to the memory of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was murdered a couple of days ago in Houston by ICE.”
Matthews’s comments were met by cheering and applause from the audience.
According to officials, Araujo was not the intended target of the traffic stop that led to his death. The witnesses in the car with him — Salgado Araujo’s brother and two of their coworkers — were also reportedly not the targets of the stop.
The men, the only known witnesses to the shooting, say immigration authorities are now pressuring them to sign deportation orders to leave the country.
This is not the first time Matthews has spoken out about the actions of ICE agents. In January, he ripped into Donald Trump’s administration in the wake of Renee Nicole Good’s killing by an immigration officer in Minneapolis.
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“I don’t want my taxes to pay for ICE, to masked thugs to roam our streets and terrorize our communities and rip families apart,” Matthews said in a video he uploaded to social media. “We should be taking care of each other. We should be minding each other. We should be housing the homeless. We shouldn’t be, you know, throwing people to the ground.”
Since the killing of Araujo last week, ICE agents have reportedly also been responsible for the death of a 26-year-old in Maine.