Lorenzo Salgado Jr. and Ronaldo Salgado, sons of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, spoke Saturday at a vigil honoring their father.

In the stuffy, standing-room-only union hall, the vigil to honor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Houston man killed by ICE this week, was ending.

The prayers had been prayed. The crowd had chanted, “Shame! Shame!” Rep. Al Green had announced that, yet again, he’ll file a motion to impeach Donald Trump. The candles were blown out, and the fluorescent lights at the Service Employees International Union came back on.

But the cameras kept rolling. Salgado’s sons were there, and they had things to say.

The older brother, Ronaldo Salgado, the teacher, described his dad. Lorenzo was a shy, hard-working man, a soccer fan, “East End through and through.”

Lorenzo was dark-skinned, and he hated the assumptions people made about him. “I’m not stupid,” he’d say. “Soy cabrón” — I’m a badass — “y mis hijos son cabrones también” — and my kids are too.

Ronaldo didn’t exactly look like a badass, not at first. He wore a blue polo shirt with red and white trim. He’s a teacher at Eastwood Academy, in the neighborhood where he grew up, and he’s proud to teach kids who are like the kid he used to be — first-generation, from working-class families, kids who believe that if they work hard in this country, they can succeed.

But as Ronaldo spoke, you could see his family’s steeliness. He’s fighting now to get his father’s things back from ICE — his white van, his wallet, his lunchbox. Ronaldo imagines that lunchbox sitting in some government warehouse, with the lunch his mom packed rotting away.

His mom wants that lunchbox back, he said. She wants to wash it.

“I hope you’re thinking that I’m making my father proud,” he said, his voice cracking. “But I don’t think I’ll ever believe that if I don’t hear it from him.”

A few minutes later, Ronaldo’s little brother, Lorenzo Salgado Jr., came to the front of the room, hugged his brother and whispered a private joke. Lorenzo Jr. wore a green Mexico jersey — their dad was a soccer fan — but when he unexpectedly turned to speak to the crowd, it was the United States of America he wanted to discuss.

Lorenzo Jr. reads history. And history, he said, repeats.

Abraham Lincoln, he said, is his favorite president. Lincoln saved the union, kept the country together when it was in danger of breaking apart, held the country to its lofty ideals.

We’re supposed to be a place, Lorenzo Jr. said, where all men are created equal, where they’re endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among those rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“My dad had that here,” he said. Lorenzo Sr. had life — a good life, with his family. He had liberty, mostly — even if that didn’t include the ability to travel back to Mexico. And he definitely had pursuit of happiness.

Right now, Lorenzo Jr. said, is a hard moment to be an American. But the response to his father’s killing, by agents of our own federal government, swells his heart with pride.

We the people will bring justice, he said.

We the people must stick together.

We the people are America.

Lorenzo Salgado, you thought, would have been proud of his sons. Those cabrones are fighting for him. For the America he wanted for them. For the America we all deserve.

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A message for America from the sons of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo