Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a 28-year-old Mexican who had traveled to Florida for vacation with a valid tourist visa, was the individual who died on July 14 after being struck by a truck while fleeing from federal immigration agents in St. Augustine, as reported by the agency Associated Press.
The incident occurred before 7:00 a.m. when the vehicle carrying Coronilla Durán and three other people stopped in the parking lot of a gas station.
As agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) approached, the four occupants fled on foot.
Coronilla Durán crossed a busy road and was fatally struck by a cargo trailer truck. The whereabouts of the other three occupants remain unknown.
Originally from San Luis de la Paz, an agricultural community in the state of Guanajuato located about 260 kilometers northwest of Mexico City, the young man had first traveled to Atlanta to visit family and friends, where he stayed for three weeks.
Then she moved to the east coast of Florida to enjoy the beaches, as explained by Isaret Jeffers, founder of Colectivo Árbol, an organization that supports agricultural workers in central Florida.
"His wife said he was there on a tourist visa. She didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t come to work; he wasn’t working. He was here as a tourist," Jeffers stated.
The widow, Yezzika Alamilla, contacted Colectivo Árbol the day after her husband's death to request assistance and travel from Mexico to arrange the repatriation of the remains.
The organization bought her a plane ticket and accommodated her for three days. Since then, the Mexican consulate has taken over the assistance.
Jeffers added that Alamilla "believes he was very scared, and that's why he ran away."
Susana Guerra Vallejo, Undersecretary for Migrant Assistance of the Guanajuato government, confirmed that Coronilla Durán "had been in the United States for a very short time and had a tourist visa."
The body will be transported on a commercial flight from Orlando to be buried in San Luis de la Paz. The man left behind two children: a seven-month-old girl and a seven-year-old boy.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries regarding whether the visa was valid, and both the Florida Highway Patrol and DHS declined to provide further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
La muerte de Coronilla Durán fue la tercera en aproximadamente una semana vinculada a operativos de ICE.
On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican man, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, in a case that the Harris County Forensic Institute classified as homicide.
On the same July 14, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian, was shot in Biddeford, Maine, by an ICE agent during a vehicular operation in which he was not the intended target.
The three cases in one week led ICE to temporarily suspend vehicle detentions for additional training of agents, although President Donald Trump publicly rejected the idea of abandoning that tactic the following day.
However, days later the White House confirmed that ICE vehicle checkpoints will continue operating nationwide.
“The president and the secretary of Homeland Security are on the same page: vehicle checkpoints are a necessary tool that ICE agents need to continue their campaign to deport the worst illegal criminals in the country,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The death of the resident of Guanajuato is at least the tenth linked to encounters with ICE agents since Trump launched his campaign of mass deportations.
Meanwhile, the mortality rate in ICE detention centers has reached its highest level in 22 years for the fiscal year 2026: 88.9 per 100,000 detainees, compared to 13 per 100,000 in 2023, according to an analysis by Reuters.
The Mexican government has asked state attorneys general in the United States to review the deaths of migrants in ICE custody or during raids for possible criminal charges.
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