Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a 28-year-old Mexican who was traveling to Florida on vacation with a valid tourist visa, died on July 14 after being struck by a tractor-trailer while fleeing from federal immigration agents in St. Augustine, as reported by the Associated Press through ABC News.
The incident occurred before 7:00 am when the vehicle carrying Coronilla Durán and three other people stopped in the parking lot of a gas station.
As agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) approached, the four occupants fled on foot.
Coronilla Durán crossed a busy highway and was fatally struck by a freight 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 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.
She then 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 ask for assistance in traveling from Mexico to manage the repatriation of the remains.
The organization bought her a plane ticket and provided accommodation 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, Deputy Secretary for Migrant Assistance of the Guanajuato government, confirmed that Coronilla Durán "had been in the United States for very little 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 about whether the visa was valid, and both the Florida Highway Patrol and the DHS declined to provide additional details, citing the ongoing investigation.
The death of Coronilla Durán was the third in about a week related to ICE operations.
On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, in a case that the Harris County Forensic Institute classified as homicide.
On that same July 14, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, the 26-year-old Colombian, was shot and killed 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 on July 14 for additional agent training, 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 for massive deportations.
The mortality rate in ICE detention centers reached its highest level in 22 years in fiscal year 2026: 88.9 per 100,000 detainees, compared to 13 per 100,000 in 2023, according to an analysis by Reuters.
The government of Mexico 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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