Man dies fleeing ICE raid in California
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Los Angeles – A man who was believed to have been running from a raid by US immigration agents died on Aug 14 after being hit by a car on a highway, police said.
City managers in Monrovia, near Los Angeles, said police were called after reports of activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at a branch of The Home Depot.
During the raid, one man ran from the parking lot of the hardware store – a place where day labourers commonly gather looking for casual work – and onto a busy highway during rush hour, Monrovia city manager Dylan Feik told the media.
A spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said the 40-year-old man was taken to hospital where he died from his injuries a few hours later.
Mr Feik said: “The city has not received any communication or information from ICE.”
ICE did not immediately respond to an AFP request for information.
Masked and armed agents from ICE and Border Patrol began carrying out raids in and around Los Angeles earlier this year, as President Donald Trump looked to fulfil his election promise to carry out the most deportations in US history.
The raids, which target hardware stores, car wash outlets and other businesses where undocumented people seek work, sparked fury in the mutlicultural city.
Protests in Los Angeles, some of which saw isloated instances of violence, were met with the mass deployment of soliders by the federal government, even as local law enforcement said they could handle the unrest.
A federal court in July ordered a halt to ICE’s roving patrols in several California counties, after rights groups argued that the raids appeared to be arresting people largely based on their race, the language they spoke or the place they had gathered. AFP
