An man was struck and killed on a highway in Virginia while fleeing immigration officials on foot on Thursday, officials said. It was the latest death to occur in an operation of the Trump administration’s crackdown on people residing unlawfully in the United States.
The man, Josue Castro-Rivera, 24, of Honduras, was found dead by responding Virginia State Police officers on Interstate 264 in Norfolk on Thursday morning, state police said. He had been struck by a pickup truck.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had stopped Mr. Castro-Rivera’s vehicle as part of a targeted operation, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security. When the officers moved to detain the vehicle’s occupants after determining they were in the country illegally, Mr. Castro-Rivera fled the scene on foot and entered the busy highway.
“One of our ICE officers administered CPR to Castro-Rivera in an attempt to keep him alive,” the D.H.S. spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, Castro-Rivera perished. The officer then informed the three detained aliens that their friend had deceased. He then grieved and prayed with them.”
Mr. Castro-Rivera lived in Norfolk and had been in the United States since 2021, his brother, Henry Castro, said.
Mr. Castro-Rivera had worked as a handyman to support his family in Honduras and had been on his way to a job site with his co-workers when they were apprehended by ICE, Mr. Castro added.
“He had a good heart,” Mr. Castro said. “He liked to help out the family with what little he could.”
The episode was at least the fourth instance in which an immigration enforcement operation has ended in death under the current administration.
In July, a Mexican farmworker fell several stories from a greenhouse during an immigration raid on a state-regulated cannabis farm in an agricultural community north of Los Angeles. He later died of his injuries.
The following month, also near Los Angeles, a man ran onto a freeway near a Home Depot parking lot where an immigration enforcement operation was taking place before being struck by a vehicle. He later died at a hospital.
And last month in the Chicago area, a man in a vehicle was shot and killed in a confrontation with immigration agents after federal officials said he drove his car into officers.
Orlando Mayorquín is a Times reporter covering California. He is based in Los Angeles.
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