A man was hit and killed on a Southern California freeway Thursday while he was running from an immigration raid at a Home Depot, authorities said.
Dylan Feik, the city manager of Monrovia, located in Los Angeles County about 10 miles northeast of Pasadena, reported that a police officer observed the raid after the police department was alerted to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the vicinity.
Amid the operations, a person ran onto the 210 Freeway, Feik stated. Shortly thereafter, emergency responders, including the fire department, answered a call concerning a vehicle striking a pedestrian.
The person was taken to a hospital and died from injuries sustained in the incident, Feik said.
The California Highway Patrol confirmed the victim as a man and announced that an investigation is ongoing regarding the circumstances of his death. His identity has not yet been disclosed to the public.
Video recorded moments after the accident shows a man in a black T-shirt lying near the inside lane of the freeway.
Vincent Enriquez, who recorded the video, said he thought at first it was a motorcycle accident.
“I was slightly puzzled as to how he ended up lying down on the freeway,” Feik mentioned. “I guessed either he was hit while crossing or exited a vehicle after an accident.”
The Department of Homeland Security denied its agents chased the person and said they do not know the person’s legal status.
A spokesperson clarified, “This person was not pursued by any DHS law enforcement,” in a statement. “We were unaware of the incident and not informed by the California Highway Patrol until hours after our area operations had ended.”
Feik said the city lacks further details about the operation and any potential detentions, noting that Monrovia has not been in contact with ICE.
Palmira Figueroa, spokesperson for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said 13 workers were detained during the raid. “It was a violent, aggressive bust,” she said. “Some of them were chasing workers in cars while they were running away.”
Network organizers are trying to reach family members, as well as the other men who were detained, Figueroa said.
Videos posted on social media appear to show agents detaining a person in the parking lot of the Home Depot, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the immigration activity.
State Assemblymember John Harabedian, whose district includes Monrovia, said in a statement on his Instagram story that 10 people were detained in the raid.
“Raids like this do not make our streets safer — they terrorize families, instill fear, and put lives at risk,” he said.
Immigration officials have concentrated many of their raids on Home Depots and other home improvement retailers that day laborers are known to frequent.
On Tuesday, Enforcement Removal Operations agents conducted a “targeted enforcement operation” at a Home Depot in Washington, D.C., as a part of the Trump administration’s wider crackdown on immigrants and homeless people in the city.
An appeals court this month maintained a Los Angeles federal judge’s temporary restraining order that bars immigration agents from using people’s spoken languages or jobs, like day laborer, or their presence at particular locations as the sole pretext to detain them.
