The Receipts (Sources for “Here We Still Are”)

If you’re here, you followed a footnote out of “Here We Still Are.” Good. I made a lot of specific, serious claims in that piece, about named people, named officials, and what video and autopsies actually showed, and I don’t think you should take any of it on my say-so. So here’s the paper trail, grouped by claim. Check my work. I would rather you trust the reporting than trust me.

I’m keeping this page plain and unlisted on purpose; it’s an appendix, not a post I’m promoting. The writing is over there. This is just the evidence.

Renee Good

The independent autopsy her family commissioned (three wounds, including the fatal shot to the head): KOMO News; NBC News.
What the agent’s own phone video shows: CBC News.
Minute-by-minute timeline: ABC News.
House Oversight (Democrats) Minnesota report (primary document): oversightdemocrats.house.gov.

The “domestic terrorist” label, and Noem’s refusal to retract it

Secretary Noem declines to retract the “domestic terrorism” comments about Good and Pretti at the Senate Judiciary hearing: ABC News; CNN; AOL/coverage.
Senate Judiciary Committee release (Durbin presses Noem): judiciary.senate.gov.

Alex Pretti

Video shows an officer had already recovered Pretti’s handgun before he was shot: CNN.
How agents escalated the encounter; the administration’s account collapses: CNN; CNN.
Videos and eyewitnesses refute the federal account; two agents placed on leave: NPR; NBC News.

Ruben Ray Martinez

DHS’s “intentionally ran over” claim against the Texas DPS body-camera footage; 23-year-old U.S. citizen, South Padre Island, March 15, 2025: NPR.

Silverio Villegas González

Illinois State Police investigation: WTTW.
Autopsy ruled a homicide; he had just dropped his kids at school: Chicago Sun-Times.
DHS’s own September 12, 2025 statement: dhs.gov.

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis (and the agent charged, Christian Castro)

This is the one where the government’s own paperwork convicts it. The shooting during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis: Wikipedia: Operation Metro Surge; The Marshall Project record.

DHS’s account is still posted and unretracted: it calls the people involved “violent criminal illegal aliens” who “violently” attacked the agent (the shovel-and-broom story the video did not support): dhs.gov, January 15, 2026.
The agent, Christian Castro, charged by the Hennepin County Attorney with assault and with falsely reporting that he was beaten: Hennepin County Attorney; The Guardian.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

Houston, July 7, 2026. A fifty-one-year-old Mexican father of three and construction contractor, about thirty-five years in the country and, his family says, in the middle of applying for legal status, killed by an ICE agent while driving his crew to a job in a white work van. The agents had come for someone else. Overview and timeline: Wikipedia; PBS NewsHour.

The drug claim, and the county lab that disproved it: after the shooting, an FBI warrant alleged bags of a substance “consistent with methamphetamine” were in plain view; the Harris County District Attorney’s office said the seized substance “tested negative for narcotics/illicit drugs,” and DA Sean Teare called the unsealing of the warrant before a grand jury saw the evidence unprecedented in twenty years. The family’s lawyer says it was granulated salt for a homemade electrolyte mix used in the Texas heat: NBC News.
The witnesses contradict the “weaponized vehicle” / “felt threatened” account: the three passengers swore in court that no agent was ever in front of the van and that Lorenzo had put it in park when the officer shot him anyway (“ya me mataron,” they already killed me): El País.
The family’s account of what happened: Houston Public Media.
Rep. Joaquin Castro and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus hearing (where Salgado Araujo’s son testified): castro.house.gov.

The pattern, and what happened in court

The list of people shot during immigration operations (Sept. 2025–Feb. 2026): NBC News tracker.
Traffic stops as the flashpoint; the charged-and-dismissed cases: Government Executive.
People charged with assaulting a federal officer, then cleared:
- Marimar Martinez (U.S. citizen, Chicago): DOJ dropped the charges: NBC News.
- Phillip M. Brown (U.S. citizen, Washington D.C.): U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute (Government Executive, above).
- Francisco Longoria (San Bernardino): charges dismissed (Government Executive, above).
The agent charged instead of the driver — Christian Castro, false report + assault, arrested in Texas, fighting extradition: CNN; Star Tribune; MPR News.

The Maine shooting, and who ICE is hiring

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was not the intended target of the operation: ABC News; NBC Boston.
DHS’s “fearing for public safety” statement, and the Biddeford shooting: Portland Press Herald; CNN.
The agent, David Brouillette; his job history and the protection orders: Portland Press Herald; The Boston Globe; Bangor Daily News; WGME.
What ICE should have known before hiring him: Mother Jones; AP.
ICE hiring standards, the training cut, and the surge from ~10,000 to ~22,000 officers: The Marshall Project; MSNBC/ms.now.
New recruits, less training, more shootings (analysis): The Dispatch.

Food and labor

Roughly 40% of U.S. crop farmworkers are undocumented (USDA data): Snopes.
How the crackdown is hitting food and farmworkers: FoodPrint.

Where to put your hands and money (Georgia)

GLAHR — Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights: ICE Free Zone campaign, community safety networks, local ICE-activity helplines.
We Are CASA — Georgia: legal support; fighting laws that force local cooperation with ICE.
ACLU of Georgia.

The history (standard references)

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Palmer Raids (1919–20); Operation Wetback (1954); Japanese American incarceration and Korematsu v. United States (1944), repudiated by the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Back to the piece: “Here We Still Are.”