PROTESTERS have vented their fury in Houston, Texas, over the killing of Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers earlier this month.

Hundreds of people joined Sunday’s protest march from Ervan Chew Park and closed down a bridge on Dunlavy Street, according to local media and videos posted on social media.

Some protesters held banners reading “Abolish Ice” and “Justice for Lorenzo.”

Mr Araujo was fatally shot by an Ice agent on July 7 while he was driving his construction crew to a building site in Houston. 

The protests came amid mounting scrutiny of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

Encounters with Ice and other immigration agents have resulted in at least 10 deaths since the start of Mr Trump’s second term in January last year.

After the Houston shooting, Ice accused Mr Araujo of using his vehicle to try to ram an agent, who fired his weapon in self-defence.

But witnesses contradicted this version of events.

In a statement issued last Thursday, the US attorney for the Southern District of Texas made no mention of any collision between Mr Salgado Araujo’s van and a law enforcement vehicle and nor did it explicitly state that the officer feared for his life. 

In a video posted online by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, an activist at Sunday’s march called for further protests to shut down the city.

“We need to show Ice, the Trump administration and the entire country that the city of Houston is not to be messed with,” the protester said.

“We cannot just sit here and let Ice hunt and murder more of our daughters, our brothers, our uncles. If we want justice, we have to demand it,” she said.

The activist said a “shutdown” of Houston, the fourth-largest US city, will take place on Friday.

Sunday’s protest followed similar rallies held across the country on the previous day, including in Portland, Maine, where, on July 13, Colombian national Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero was fatally shot during a traffic stop in nearby Biddeford.

On Saturday, Mr Guerrero’s family paid tribute to the father of a three-year-old girl, telling the Telmundo news network that the dead man had still had “many dreams to fulfil.”

After the latest killings, the Trump administration’s top immigration enforcement official, Tom Homan, said the agency would start a “short pause” on traffic stops.