His Son Was Killed by an Off-Duty ICE Agent. Now Keith Porter's Father Is Turning Grief Into a Fight

For Keith Porter Sr., grief has hardened into purpose. Months after his son was fatally shot by an off duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Los Angeles, the Houston father is refusing to stay quiet, and he is asking everyone who will listen to make noise until someone is held accountable.

His son, Keith Porter Jr., was 43 years old, a father of two daughters, and a Home Depot worker described by loved ones as a caretaker who lived to make people laugh. He was killed on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2025, at a Northridge apartment complex where the off duty agent also lived. Authorities said the agent was responding to the sound of gunfire and fireworks, and that Porter had fired celebratory shots to ring in the new year.

From there, the accounts split sharply. The Department of Homeland Security said the agent was forced to defensively use his weapon and labeled Porter an active shooter threat. Porter's family and witnesses tell a very different story, saying he was holding a rifle pointed upward, never turned toward the agent, and was not given a real chance to comply before three shots rang out. Some neighbors said they never heard the agent identify himself as law enforcement. His family, backed by civil rights attorneys, has argued the agent should have called local police and waited rather than confronting Porter himself.

Now his father is channeling the loss into action. In a recent interview filmed in Houston, Keith Porter Sr. said staying active is the only way he knows to honor his son. I don't want to just sit in the house, he said. He wouldn't do that if it was me. He would be up and out and active. Carrying what he calls his ICE whistles, he has urged residents to make some humongous noise, and he has broadened his call for justice to include Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, another man whose death he wants investigated.

The case sits inside a larger and increasingly tense national picture, as deadly encounters involving immigration agents have drawn protests across the country. A petition calling for the off duty agent to be arrested and charged has circulated widely, and the family has said local officials have offered little indication they intend to pursue the officer. The Los Angeles Police Department, which is investigating, has said it has no updates.

For Porter's father, the fight is about more than one case. He has said fear cannot be the reason communities stay silent, and that the way to keep his son's memory alive is to keep showing up and demanding answers. His son brought joy, his family says. His father intends to make sure the country cannot look away from how that joy was taken.