A 28-year-old man died on Tuesday in St. Augustine, Florida, after being struck by a truck while fleeing during an operation involving federal immigration agents, authorities reported.
The accident occurred around 6:40 AM, near a Wawa gas station located on State Road 16, about 56 kilometers south of Jacksonville, according to Sergeant Dylan Bryan, spokesperson for the Florida Highway Patrol, in statements collected by The New York Times.
At the scene were agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) when the four occupants of a vehicle abandoned the car and fled.
According to Bryan, one of them ran across the road and "entered the path of the trailer truck," which hit him.
The driver of the heavy vehicle stopped immediately and tried to assist the victim, but the man died at the scene.
So far, the authorities have not revealed their identity or nationality.
Ongoing investigation
The exact circumstances of the incident are still under investigation.
The authorities have not clarified whether the deceased had direct contact with federal agents or if he was being actively pursued when the incident occurred.
The vehicle carrying the four occupants was towed as part of the investigation, while the whereabouts of the other three passengers remained unknown until Tuesday afternoon.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to requests for comment made by The New York Times.
It occurs after other fatal operations
The death occurs in a context of growing scrutiny over federal migration operations, following several fatal incidents reported in recent weeks.
On Monday, ICE agents shot and killed 26-year-old in Biddeford, Maine, who had a valid work permit. His three-year-old daughter was in the vehicle during the operation. Subsequently, Senator Angus King reported that the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to him that Guerrero was not the target of the arrest warrant being executed by the agents.
Days earlier, on July 7, 52-year-old Mexican Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by gunfire from an ICE agent during an operation in Houston, Texas. The Harris County Forensic Institute classified the case as a homicide, while the DHS later acknowledged that Salgado Araujo was not the person they were seeking and that the participating agents were not equipped with body cameras.
After those events, the administration of President Donald Trump ordered to temporarily suspend most traffic control operations conducted by ICE, although immigration enforcement actions continue in other forms.
The pattern of fatal violence during immigration operations is not new. In January of this year, during the so-called Metro Surge Operation in Minneapolis, federal agents killed two American citizens: Renee Nicole Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24. These incidents led Trump to remove the ICE director in Minnesota and to reassign 700 state agents, although operations continued to intensify across the rest of the country.
According to official figures, ICE made over 10,000 arrests in just five days at the beginning of July, averaging nearly 2,000 detentions per day, amid the tightening of federal immigration policy.
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