Man Who Died Running From ICE Was Tourist With a Ticket Home

The 28-year-old Mexican man who was killed while running from immigration agents last week was visiting the country on a valid tourist visa.

Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran was in a car with three other people on July 14 when ICE and Homeland Security agents pulled them over near State Road 16 in St. Augustine, Florida. Coronilla Duran fled the scene on foot and was hit by a semi-truck as he attempted to cross the highway.

His wife, Yésica Alamilla López, told reporters that Coronilla Duran had only just recently arrived in the U.S.

“He had a tourist visa and had been here in the United States for a short time—only three weeks,” she told Spectrum News after arriving at the Orlando airport from Mexico. “He had been in Florida for just two days.”

Isaret Jeffers, the founder of Orlando-based farmworkers’ advocacy group Colectivo Arbol, has been assisting Alamilla López in the wake of her husband’s death. Jeffers told the Miami Herald Monday that Coronilla Duran was planning to return to Mexico within days of his death.

“He was going to return this past Saturday. He had already bought a flight,” Jeffers told the paper. “Now, unfortunately, if he is returning, his return is different.”

Jose Rivera, a local garbage truck driver who witnessed Coronilla Duran’s demise, told the Herald that the 28-year-old slipped and fell when he reached a small piece of grass in the median of the highway. Coronilla Duran reportedly picked himself up but stumbled into the oncoming traffic.

“The traffic was coming pretty quick, and he just lost his footing and didn’t look where the traffic was coming,” Rivera said. “He kept looking back.”

Alamilla López told the Herald that she and her husband were married for 10 years and share a seven-year-old son and a seven-month-old daughter together. They also run a small business in San Luis de La Paz. She revealed to the paper that she had only come to learn of her husband’s death while watching television.

Coronilla Duran’s death is the latest in a long string of domestic bloodshed by ICE and its affiliates. Just this month, federal agents have shot and killed at least two people: Johan Sebastián Guerrero, who was killed in Biddeford, Maine, despite having a valid work permit and Social Security number, as well as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small business owner who was killed in Houston, Texas.

At the time of publication, there have been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda. ...