Leading Democrats and immigration advocates in Michigan are demanding transparency from federal authorities after a man died in a fiery car crash as he attempted to avoid agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mario David Coronado Juarez, a Guatemalan national, was killed Sunday in Grand Rapids when his vehicle struck a tree at high speed and burst into flames shortly after the ICE officers tried to conduct a traffic stop.
His death came the same day as two other incidents of ICE violence, as critics say officers are pursuing increasingly aggressive tactics in support of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In Austin, Texas, an agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan man, Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, who was working as a Door Dash delivery driver. And in Evanston, Illinois, a US citizen needed hospital treatment for injuries sustained when two ICE agents attempted to arrest him in an apparent case of mistaken identity.
A Washington Post analysis in July found that at least 17 motorists had been shot by federal immigration agents during enforcement operations, and six of those died.
Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic Michigan governor, said she had ordered a review of the Grand Rapids incident.
Joseph Trigg, chief of the Grand Rapids police department, asked the Michigan state police (MSP) to join the investigation, noting in a statement that his own traffic detectives had been “limited in their ability” to obtain information from federal agencies.
“MSP, under the direction of the governor and attorney general, may be in a better position to determine the timeframe and any other potentially relevant circumstances, and any next steps that may be appropriate,” Trigg’s statement said.
According to the immigration advocacy group Movimiento Cosecha in Grand Rapids, Coronado, 36, was from the Guatemalan city of San Marcos, and came to the US alone to work as a construction worker and send money home for his wife and three young children.
Hillary Scholten, a Democratic Michigan congresswoman, said she had asked ICE for an explanation of its agents’ actions prior to the accident.
“No traffic stop should end with a fatality. Something went wrong, and we need to know what and how,” she said in a statement that requested “a transparent investigation into facts we don’t yet know.”
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its parent agency, have not yet commented on the incident.
