Texas
Prosecutor confirms no meth was found in van of man shot by ICE officers
HOUSTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor says tests on “a white crystal-like substance” found inside the van of a man shot to death by immigration officers in Houston last month showed the material was not methamphetamine.
U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz confirmed the tests were negative for meth in a statement to The Texas Tribune, the news organization reported Thursday.
Reitz did not say what the substance actually was, but an attorney for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s family has said it was a homemade electrolyte mixture that Salgado Araujo and his construction crew used to stay hydrated in the grueling summer heat.
Salgado Araujo, 52, was killed July 7 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in unmarked vehicles chased his white work van through the streets of Houston, then shot him through the window. He had been driving his work crew, including his brother, to a construction site.
Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who lived without legal status in the U.S. for 35 years, ran a homebuilding business and had never been in trouble with the law.
His death is one of at least 10 during immigration enforcement operations since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, sparking protests in Houston and calls for an independent investigation.
Shortly after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said Salgado Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” and that the officer had fired in self-defense. The FBI then executed a search warrant on the van, alleging that officers saw several small bags inside filled with a substance that appeared to be methamphetamine.
But the two men who were riding with Salgado Araujo wrote in statements submitted in court that the ICE officers were never in danger of being run over, and in fact were always to the side of the van, never in front of or behind it.
Reitz revealed last month that the ICE officers were targeting two Guatemalan men who were potentially subject to deportation and who were driving a van that was similar to the one Salgado Araujo was driving the day he was killed.
David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas which is representing the Salgado family, said the FBI search warrant was part of a government attempt to create a “false narrative.”
“Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should still be alive today, and nothing about the government’s so-called ‘search’ could have changed that fact. That search proved what the Salgado family had said all along: Lorenzo was a hardworking man who made homes for Houston families, and his wife packed him homemade electrolyte mixes to keep him and his crew hydrated under the Texas sun,” Donatti said.
“By taking the unusual steps of securing and then unsealing their search warrant, the government has demonstrated that it is more interested in creating a false narrative than in seeking the truth,” he said.
“The Salgados deserve real answers about what happened to their father,” he said.
Texas
Court order kicks in striking federal rules on silencers and certain guns
A court order that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns took effect Thursday after the U.S. Justice Department did not file an appeal before a seven-day deadline set by a federal judge in Texas.
The ruling allows people to purchase silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and certain other firearms without registration, while also removing an extra layer of background checks.
The order benefits parties that brought the lawsuit, including some dealers based outside northern Texas, but it is not a national injunction. Advocates say there are similar challenges in federal courts in other states. Separately, some states have their own prohibitions on silencers.
U.S. District Judge James Hendrix in Lubbock, Texas, said regulations in a 1930s-era law are unconstitutional. He said the rules must fall after the Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump eliminated a $200 permit tax on the devices.
Hendrix said his Aug. 5 order would take effect in seven days unless the government appealed. There was no sign of a filing Wednesday in online entries at Hendrix's court or the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The government's refusal to pursue an immediate appeal "is a failure to defend public safety," said Emma Brown, executive director at Giffords, the gun violence prevention group.
An email Thursday seeking comment from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces the law, was not immediately answered. Under court procedure, the government still could file an appeal in the weeks ahead, even while Hendrix's order stands.
Gun Owners of America said two members acquired suppressors at Silencer Shop in Leander, Texas, without having to register.
"Our members are putting the historic victory into action. The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end," said Erich Pratt, the group's senior vice president.
The National Firearms Act has been around since 1934 in response to concerns about mafia violence. It regulates firearms that are considered the most dangerous, though gun-rights advocates say it conflicts with the Constitution's Second Amendment.
"The system of regulating these weapons has been effective. The need is no less today than it was after the Prohibition era almost a century ago," said Giffords chief counsel Adam Skaggs.
New York
NYPD officer convicted of using chokehold banned after death of George Floyd
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City police officer who was the first prosecuted under a local law banning chokeholds and some other methods of restraint was convicted Thursday.
Omar Habib was convicted of the misdemeanor established in the law that was passed after George Floyd ‘s killing, along with felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault, and is facing up to seven years in prison, news outlets reported.
Habib has also been dismissed from the New York Police Department. He had previously been suspended without pay.
Bronx Criminal Supreme Court Judge Cynthia Isales ordered him held without bail, according to the New York Daily News.
Habib, who joined the department in 2007, was responding to a 911 call at a Bronx catering hall in 2023 when a drunk and disorderly man resisted arrest, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said. Habib placed the man in a chokehold so tight it impeded his breathing and circulation and made him pass out, according to the district attorney.
Jacob Z. Weinstein, Habib’s attorney, argued during the trial that other factors could have caused the man to pass out, including drinking without eating enough food.
Patrick Hendry, president of a New York police union, said the verdict was “further proof of a grim reality: every second police officers spend on this job puts them at risk of criminal prosecution, and pervasive anti-police propaganda has made it incredibly difficult to receive a fair trial,” according to the New York Daily News.
Habib was charged under a 2020 city law passed after Floyd’s death that makes it a crime for police officers to use chokeholds or sit, kneel, or stand on someone’s torso during an arrest.
The law was challenged by police unions but was upheld in 2023 by New York state’s highest court.
Police use of chokeholds was already banned in most cases by NYPD regulations at the time the law was enacted, but officers who used them were rarely prosecuted.
A police officer accused of using a prohibited chokehold on Eric Garner, who died during an arrest in 2014, lost his job with the city but faced no criminal charges.
Before his recent arrest, Habib had a history of substantiated misconduct complaints about excessive force and abusing his authority. He was previously cited by the department for using a chokehold in 2017, an incident that was later the subject of news stories about officers continuing to use banned restraints.
Habib was also accused of lying under oath and tampering with evidence in a 2016 gun raid, prompting several defendants to withdraw their guilty pleas.
Nevada
Judge drops case against electors accused of forging certificate in 2020 election
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The yearslong case against six Nevada Republicans who were accused of submitting a bogus certificate that falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election has been dismissed, a judge ruled Thursday.
The dismissal marks the latest setback in swing states’ efforts to prosecute fake electors who tried to keep Trump in the White House after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
Three other fake elector cases in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia have been dismissed. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her office’s criminal case but vowed to bring it back to a grand jury in hopes of securing another indictment. The dismissal was a legal maneuver aimed at getting around a deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings after Mayes lost an appeal earlier in June.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is also running for governor as a Democrat, brought charges relating to forgery and “offering a false instrument for filing or record” against the six Nevada Republicans, who pleaded not guilty. His office plans to appeal the ruling.
The defendants included Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, the former chair of the Clark County Republican Party.
In a Thursday statement, McDonald’s defense attorney Richard Wright called the attorney general’s plans to appeal “hasty” and “premature” and said continuing the case was politically motivated.
After the 2020 election, the six Republican electors gathered outside of the Nevada Legislature to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral votes to Trump, despite Biden winning the state by more than 30,000 votes. The ceremony was broadcast online, and the video footage was used as evidence in the case.
The case has revolved around the defendants’ intent behind submitting the certificate.
Prosecutors argue the defendants intended for their documents to be mistaken for actual electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on Jan. 6, 2021.
The defendants say submitting the certificate was an act of “political theater” designed to publicize their concerns about the election. They were preserving their rights to challenge the official election results and had no intent to deceive a government agency into accepting the GOP certificate as real, their attorneys argued.
Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus agreed.
She found there was a lack of evidence that showed the electors intended to deceive government officials, and she determined that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.
“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in her ruling.
Jurisdiction had also been an issue, but the case eventually landed in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas and leans Democratic.
The case was originally scheduled for a trial in Nevada’s capital of Carson City, but the attorney general’s office voluntarily dismissed the case to pursue it instead in Southern Nevada, which leans more Democratic.
Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Those cases ended after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. A fake electors case is ongoing in Wisconsin.
Prosecutor confirms no meth was found in van of man shot by ICE officers
HOUSTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor says tests on “a white crystal-like substance” found inside the van of a man shot to death by immigration officers in Houston last month showed the material was not methamphetamine.
U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz confirmed the tests were negative for meth in a statement to The Texas Tribune, the news organization reported Thursday.
Reitz did not say what the substance actually was, but an attorney for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s family has said it was a homemade electrolyte mixture that Salgado Araujo and his construction crew used to stay hydrated in the grueling summer heat.
Salgado Araujo, 52, was killed July 7 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in unmarked vehicles chased his white work van through the streets of Houston, then shot him through the window. He had been driving his work crew, including his brother, to a construction site.
Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who lived without legal status in the U.S. for 35 years, ran a homebuilding business and had never been in trouble with the law.
His death is one of at least 10 during immigration enforcement operations since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, sparking protests in Houston and calls for an independent investigation.
Shortly after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security said Salgado Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” and that the officer had fired in self-defense. The FBI then executed a search warrant on the van, alleging that officers saw several small bags inside filled with a substance that appeared to be methamphetamine.
But the two men who were riding with Salgado Araujo wrote in statements submitted in court that the ICE officers were never in danger of being run over, and in fact were always to the side of the van, never in front of or behind it.
Reitz revealed last month that the ICE officers were targeting two Guatemalan men who were potentially subject to deportation and who were driving a van that was similar to the one Salgado Araujo was driving the day he was killed.
David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas which is representing the Salgado family, said the FBI search warrant was part of a government attempt to create a “false narrative.”
“Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should still be alive today, and nothing about the government’s so-called ‘search’ could have changed that fact. That search proved what the Salgado family had said all along: Lorenzo was a hardworking man who made homes for Houston families, and his wife packed him homemade electrolyte mixes to keep him and his crew hydrated under the Texas sun,” Donatti said.
“By taking the unusual steps of securing and then unsealing their search warrant, the government has demonstrated that it is more interested in creating a false narrative than in seeking the truth,” he said.
“The Salgados deserve real answers about what happened to their father,” he said.
Texas
Court order kicks in striking federal rules on silencers and certain guns
A court order that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns took effect Thursday after the U.S. Justice Department did not file an appeal before a seven-day deadline set by a federal judge in Texas.
The ruling allows people to purchase silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and certain other firearms without registration, while also removing an extra layer of background checks.
The order benefits parties that brought the lawsuit, including some dealers based outside northern Texas, but it is not a national injunction. Advocates say there are similar challenges in federal courts in other states. Separately, some states have their own prohibitions on silencers.
U.S. District Judge James Hendrix in Lubbock, Texas, said regulations in a 1930s-era law are unconstitutional. He said the rules must fall after the Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump eliminated a $200 permit tax on the devices.
Hendrix said his Aug. 5 order would take effect in seven days unless the government appealed. There was no sign of a filing Wednesday in online entries at Hendrix's court or the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The government's refusal to pursue an immediate appeal "is a failure to defend public safety," said Emma Brown, executive director at Giffords, the gun violence prevention group.
An email Thursday seeking comment from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces the law, was not immediately answered. Under court procedure, the government still could file an appeal in the weeks ahead, even while Hendrix's order stands.
Gun Owners of America said two members acquired suppressors at Silencer Shop in Leander, Texas, without having to register.
"Our members are putting the historic victory into action. The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end," said Erich Pratt, the group's senior vice president.
The National Firearms Act has been around since 1934 in response to concerns about mafia violence. It regulates firearms that are considered the most dangerous, though gun-rights advocates say it conflicts with the Constitution's Second Amendment.
"The system of regulating these weapons has been effective. The need is no less today than it was after the Prohibition era almost a century ago," said Giffords chief counsel Adam Skaggs.
New York
NYPD officer convicted of using chokehold banned after death of George Floyd
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City police officer who was the first prosecuted under a local law banning chokeholds and some other methods of restraint was convicted Thursday.
Omar Habib was convicted of the misdemeanor established in the law that was passed after George Floyd ‘s killing, along with felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault, and is facing up to seven years in prison, news outlets reported.
Habib has also been dismissed from the New York Police Department. He had previously been suspended without pay.
Bronx Criminal Supreme Court Judge Cynthia Isales ordered him held without bail, according to the New York Daily News.
Habib, who joined the department in 2007, was responding to a 911 call at a Bronx catering hall in 2023 when a drunk and disorderly man resisted arrest, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said. Habib placed the man in a chokehold so tight it impeded his breathing and circulation and made him pass out, according to the district attorney.
Jacob Z. Weinstein, Habib’s attorney, argued during the trial that other factors could have caused the man to pass out, including drinking without eating enough food.
Patrick Hendry, president of a New York police union, said the verdict was “further proof of a grim reality: every second police officers spend on this job puts them at risk of criminal prosecution, and pervasive anti-police propaganda has made it incredibly difficult to receive a fair trial,” according to the New York Daily News.
Habib was charged under a 2020 city law passed after Floyd’s death that makes it a crime for police officers to use chokeholds or sit, kneel, or stand on someone’s torso during an arrest.
The law was challenged by police unions but was upheld in 2023 by New York state’s highest court.
Police use of chokeholds was already banned in most cases by NYPD regulations at the time the law was enacted, but officers who used them were rarely prosecuted.
A police officer accused of using a prohibited chokehold on Eric Garner, who died during an arrest in 2014, lost his job with the city but faced no criminal charges.
Before his recent arrest, Habib had a history of substantiated misconduct complaints about excessive force and abusing his authority. He was previously cited by the department for using a chokehold in 2017, an incident that was later the subject of news stories about officers continuing to use banned restraints.
Habib was also accused of lying under oath and tampering with evidence in a 2016 gun raid, prompting several defendants to withdraw their guilty pleas.
Nevada
Judge drops case against electors accused of forging certificate in 2020 election
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The yearslong case against six Nevada Republicans who were accused of submitting a bogus certificate that falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election has been dismissed, a judge ruled Thursday.
The dismissal marks the latest setback in swing states’ efforts to prosecute fake electors who tried to keep Trump in the White House after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
Three other fake elector cases in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia have been dismissed. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her office’s criminal case but vowed to bring it back to a grand jury in hopes of securing another indictment. The dismissal was a legal maneuver aimed at getting around a deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings after Mayes lost an appeal earlier in June.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is also running for governor as a Democrat, brought charges relating to forgery and “offering a false instrument for filing or record” against the six Nevada Republicans, who pleaded not guilty. His office plans to appeal the ruling.
The defendants included Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, the former chair of the Clark County Republican Party.
In a Thursday statement, McDonald’s defense attorney Richard Wright called the attorney general’s plans to appeal “hasty” and “premature” and said continuing the case was politically motivated.
After the 2020 election, the six Republican electors gathered outside of the Nevada Legislature to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral votes to Trump, despite Biden winning the state by more than 30,000 votes. The ceremony was broadcast online, and the video footage was used as evidence in the case.
The case has revolved around the defendants’ intent behind submitting the certificate.
Prosecutors argue the defendants intended for their documents to be mistaken for actual electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on Jan. 6, 2021.
The defendants say submitting the certificate was an act of “political theater” designed to publicize their concerns about the election. They were preserving their rights to challenge the official election results and had no intent to deceive a government agency into accepting the GOP certificate as real, their attorneys argued.
Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus agreed.
She found there was a lack of evidence that showed the electors intended to deceive government officials, and she determined that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.
“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in her ruling.
Jurisdiction had also been an issue, but the case eventually landed in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas and leans Democratic.
The case was originally scheduled for a trial in Nevada’s capital of Carson City, but the attorney general’s office voluntarily dismissed the case to pursue it instead in Southern Nevada, which leans more Democratic.
Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Those cases ended after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. A fake electors case is ongoing in Wisconsin.
