The small bags found inside the van being driven by an immigrant who was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston this month did not contain drugs, the Harris County district attorney’s office has confirmed, contrary to initial statements from the federal government.

The driver, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was shot during a traffic stop in early July, one in a string of fatal encounters as the Trump administration continues its immigration crackdown.

FBI officials obtained a warrant to search Salgado Araujo’s van after telling a federal judge that they believed that a “crystal-like” substance in plastic bags inside the vehicle might be methamphetamine. But family members of the victim repeatedly disputed that claim.

The district attorney’s office Friday confirmed that the substance tested negative for narcotics and illicit drugs. The office has declined to comment further on the test results due to an ongoing investigation.

The area’s congresswoman, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, said in a statement Friday that the substance was an “electrolyte powder to stay hydrated working outside in the hot Texas summer.”

Ruby Powers, a lawyer for Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, who is the victim’s younger brother and was a passenger in the van, previously said in a statement that the substance was granulated salt. She said that Salgado Araujo, a construction worker, often mixed the salt with water as a means of staying hydrated, a common practice among outdoor workers.

“The attempt to cast a shadow over Lorenzo Salgado’s name has failed,” Garcia said in the statement.

The dispute over the substance in the bags came after the FBI’s application for a search warrant — a document typically filed under seal — was submitted publicly. The FBI’s Houston field office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Salgado Araujo, who was from Mexico and had lived in the United States for 35 years, was on his way to a construction job on the morning of July 7 with his brother and two other workers when federal immigration agents tried to stop his van.

Federal officials have accused Salgado Araujo of ramming into an ICE vehicle before an agent shot him in the abdomen.

The agents had been searching for a different person, the Department of Homeland Security has said. The passengers in the van have disputed the agency’s account.

Salgado Araujo’s death added to a growing list of encounters between immigration agents and people in vehicles amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. About 20 people have been shot at in their cars, some of them fatally.

Within a week of the shooting in Houston, a federal immigration agent shot and killed a man in a vehicle in Biddeford, Maine. In the hours after the shooting, details emerged to suggest that immigration agents may have been seeking a different person.

There are multiple investigations into the encounter between agents and Salgado Araujo, including by local agencies that have said federal officials were not cooperating with their Houston counterparts.

Salgado Araujo was a husband and father of three children who was close to obtaining legal residency at the time of his death, according to his family.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Madaleine Rubin/Meridith Kohut
c. 2026 The New York Times Company