Man Fatally Hit by Truck While Fleeing ICE Marks Third Deadly ICE Encounter in a Week

MIAMI, FL – Earlier today, a 28-year-old man was fatally hit by a truck as he fled from an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in St. Augustine, Florida. The man was reported to have been inside his vehicle with three other people at a gas station when ICE agents approached them. According to FHP, the four fled on foot, with one man running into traffic where he was fatally struck.

He is the third person to die following an ICE encounter this week.

On July 7, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while on his way to work. Mr. Salgado Araujo lived in the United States for 35 years. He raised three sons, all U.S. citizens. ICE later admitted Mr. Salgado Araujo wasn’t the person they were after – he simply “resembled” their target.

Days later, ICE shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old man living in Maine. His wife and 3-year-old daughter, still in her Bluey pajamas, arrived at the scene soon after to find him dead. ICE again admitted that he was not the intended target of their operation.

Three deaths. One week. Maine, Texas, Florida.

ICE agents are under orders to meet arbitrary and unprecedented arrest quotas the Trump administration invented out of thin air – and our streets are flooded with agents because of it. These deaths are the devastating, yet predictable price of that agenda, and it was always going to come to this.

Keisha Mulfort, Deputy Executive Director and Strategy Officer of the ACLU of Florida, shared the following statement:

“Our country is experiencing an existential crisis, and it is one we cannot afford to look away from. When people are dying because they are afraid – afraid of a traffic stop, afraid of a gas station, afraid of driving to work – we are no longer talking about immigration enforcement. We are talking about a rogue agency operating without oversight, without restraint, and without regard for human life. While we may not yet know every fact of what happened this morning, we know enough. An agency is answering to arrest quotas instead of the Constitution, and it will continue costing people their lives until someone with the power to stop this does. That someone is Congress, and its silence is a choice.

“Congress must end these arrest quotas now. Secretary Mullin must draw down ICE’s nationwide arrest surge and commit to real reform. There should not be a next name on this list.

“Get ICE off our streets. Our communities are safer, and our neighbors are safer, without them.”