ICE detainee accused of killing coworker with sledgehammer in Harris County

A Spring renovation site became the center of a murder investigation after Juan Antonio Salinas Leija, a 47-year-old carpenter, was found dead with severe trauma to his upper torso and head and neck area. Harris County deputies said family members had not heard from him since Friday afternoon before a woman called 911 and reported finding her brother dead at the house.

Detectives responded around 11:30 a.m. Sunday to a home on Goldensong Court, where Salinas Leija had been working for several weeks. Court records and law enforcement accounts say Josue Abraham Chirino-Leonice is accused of killing him with a sledgehammer. Chirino-Leonice, 19, was arrested by local law enforcement in Pasadena on April 12 after he was reportedly found driving the victim’s vehicle.

The case quickly moved from the crime scene to jail and then into federal immigration custody. ICE said it lodged an immigration detainer with the Harris County Jail on April 13, one day after the arrest. The agency said Chirino-Leonice is a Venezuelan national who entered the United States in 2023 and was released into the interior of the country after a Border Patrol encounter in November 2023.

ICE also said its Houston field office is responsible for immigration enforcement across 58 counties in Southeast Texas, a reach that underscores how one arrest in Harris County can immediately become a federal-local handoff case. For employers, contractors and homeowners hiring workers on renovation jobs, the sequence matters: a worker was on site for weeks, the family lost contact, the victim’s vehicle later surfaced in another city, and the suspect ended up in county jail with a federal detainer attached.

The killing landed inside a broader political fight over how Houston and Harris County coordinate with federal immigration authorities. Houston City Council approved a new HPD-ICE policy on April 8 intended to curtail some police coordination with immigration enforcement. Gov. Greg Abbott then threatened to withhold more than $110 million in public-safety grants, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit over the city’s ordinance.

Harris County commissioners also discussed county-level immigration-enforcement guidelines on April 14, showing that the fallout from this case is not limited to one prosecution. It is now part of a wider debate over how local agencies, jail officials, and federal authorities share information when a violent crime suspect moves through the system.