Four immigration enforcement-related deaths within the span of one week – with no end in sight
Armed with a combined $240 billion in no-strings-attached funding and Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s barbaric and turbocharged mass deportation purge, ICE has pushed its agents to chase arrest quotas at any cost. This state-sanctioned hunting of our immigrant neighbors, empowered by Kavanaugh stops, has predictably resulted in an unprecedented body count. The past days alone have seen a slew of deaths tied to this surge.
MORE ICE INFLICTED DEATHS CREATE SAD BOND BETWEEN TEXAS AND MAINE
On July 7, 52-year-old Texas dad Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was on his way to pick up his work crew when he was shot and killed during a so-called “targeted” immigration enforcement action that was actually targeting someone else. Six days later in Maine, ICE killed again, shooting 25-year-old dad Johan Sebastián four times while he was also on his way to work. Witness Daniel Boucher described a horrific scene where Johan Sebastián was “bleeding profusely from the head,” the Portland Press Herald reported. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’”
The two fathers became the 10th and 11th individuals to be shot dead by mass deportation agents since the start of the administration.
The same day Johan Sebastián was killed in Maine, July 13, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva suffered a fatal cardiac event while being transferred out of a privately-operated detention camp in Georgia. “The Irwin county detention center, where he had been held, began detaining immigrants again last year,” The Guardian reported. “The facility’s contract with ICE had been terminated in 2021 by the Biden administration, after a nurse working at the facility blew the whistle on alleged medical abuse.”
Arenas-Silva, 45, became the at least 50th individual to die while in federal immigration detention since the start of the second Trump administration.
AN OUT-OF-CONTROL SURGE AND PURGE
The day after that, July 14, 28-year-old Mexican tourist Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran was killed in Florida after he ran from a number of mass deportation agents and was hit by a tractor trailer. Coronilla Duran, who had spent several weeks visiting Georgia and was on his way to enjoy the Sunshine State’s beaches, was in a car with several others when he was pulled over by ICE agents. Likely terrified, he fled but “slipped and fell when he reached a small piece of grass in the median of the highway,” The New Republic reports. “Coronilla Duran reportedly picked himself up but stumbled into the oncoming traffic.”
Coronilla Duran, a father of two, became the at least third person to die since last year “after fleeing agents and being struck by vehicles,” the AP said.
“Whether it’s ICE agents gunning down a father in the streets of Houston, shooting a young man in Maine or conducting operations right here in Northeast Florida that result in a deadly crash, the outcome is the same: fear, chaos and death,” State Rep. Angie Nixon told the outlet.
This record surge and purge – “the daily rate of ICE arrests in June was over 1,300, the highest month of the Trump administration,” writes Syracuse University’s Austin Kocher – represents a threat to us all when the mass deportation agents who have shed innocent blood across the country have not been held fully accountable and continue to stalk our streets. “The ICE agent who fatally shot unarmed mother Renee Good in Minneapolis has been quietly relocated and allowed to resume working in another state,” PunchUp reported in April.
Further reporting reveals that David Brouillette, the agent that reportedly shot and killed Johan Sebastián, has a history of violent and racist behavior, including hurling a death threat against one of his ex-wives, the AP reports. “And all of you should have your f——–g throats cut,” Brouillette said in a voicemail. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f——-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”
Brouillette’s second ex-wife also revealed that she’s seeking a protective order following news of Johan Sebastián’s shooting death. “If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes,” she said. In fact, when Brouillette’s first ex-wife said that when he told her last year that he’d been recruited by the Trump administration, she thought he was having another mental health episode.
Brouillette “never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets,” his own relatives said according to the AP.
FOR-PROFIT PRISONS TAKE A PAGE OUT OF ICE BOOK
Recent criminal charges facing two private immigration prison employees further highlight the continued risks to all communities. Since last month, two individuals employed by GEO Group – which holds lucrative federal contracts with ICE – have been arrested and charged after injuring Americans who were exercising their right to protest.
“A Newark man employed by GEO Group allegedly ran down a woman waving an upside-down American flag during a Father’s Day vigil outside the company’s controversial Delaney Hall immigrant detention center,” the New Jersey Vindicator reported last month. The suspect, Thomas K. Brown, has been charged with assault by auto “after investigators determined that he drove his red Dodge Challenger into Alex James,” the report continued.
“Onlookers gasped and screamed as the car struck James near the waist, sending the American flag flying and dragging her several yards across the pavement, according to video posted to social media,” the report continued.
Since then, a second GEO Group employee, Brandon Booth, has been charged with attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon after he shot protester Emma Landis in the leg outside Colorado’s Aurora ICE Processing Center, Sentinel Colorado reports. “The affidavit adds that Booth acknowledged Landis and the other woman were not doing anything that posed a threat to his life at the time he fired the gun.”
Thankfully, both victims suffered non-fatal injuries and have since been discharged from the hospital. Too many other neighbors, however, won’t ever be able to return home. Nor have their families seen any justice in the form of criminal charges against the armed, unaccountable individuals who took their loved ones. When Kavanaugh stops are now becoming Kavanaugh killings, we should all be demanding justice because tomorrow it could be any one of us.
SHOW COURAGE, STOP THE PURGE
“The Trump Miller deportation machine is cruel, costly, chaotic, and now deadly on a growing scale. They are killing our fathers, our neighbors, our coworkers, with no regard for human life,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “As long as there is a quota of arrests to meet, ICE agents will continue to hunt immigrants indiscriminately, and with the Supreme Court’s blessing, they are free to racially profile. Congress needs to hold this administration accountable.”
