Southern California’s immigrant rights community is expressing grief and outrage over the death Thursday of a man hit and killed on the 210 Freeway as he tried to flee Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia.
“It just breaks my heart because it’s just so inhumane,” said Robert Chao Romero, a UCLA professor of Chicano studies and Monrovia resident. “These horrible, unjust ICE policies led to someone dying.”
The man was identified as Carlos Roberto Montoya, a Guatemalan national, per the vice Guatemalan consulate in Los Angeles.
His death at a hospital was confirmed Thursday afternoon by Monrovia City Manager Dylan Feik. The circumstances surrounding the fatal accident are under investigation by the California Highway Patrol.
Monrovia police received reports at 9:43 a.m. of immigration agents approaching the Home Depot, according to Feik, who said an officer saw possible Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the site.
In a emailed statement to The Times, the Department of Homeland Security said that “the individual was not being pursued by any DHS law enforcement” and that the agency was not aware of his death on the freeway until hours after operations in the area had concluded.
Video footage viewed by The Times showed masked men in tactical gear detaining day laborers at the home improvement store parking lot and taking them away in unmarked vehicles. The masked agents did not stay on the scene after the day laborer was struck by the vehicle on the freeway, according to a witness who spoke to The Times anonymously for fear of retaliation from his employer.
A day laborer who asked that his name not be used, citing safety concerns, said he goes to the Monrovia Home Depot every day around 8 a.m. in search of work.
This morning started like any other, he said, until he heard people start to yell, “La migra, corre.” (“Immigration, run!”)
He took out his phone and started to record.
Although he avoided detention, he said, he “felt powerless” that he couldn’t help his friends.
“It feels horrible — I couldn’t do anything for them other than record what was happening,” he said.
As workers scrambled away from the agents, one person jumped a concrete wall and entered the eastbound 210 Freeway. The man ran north across the freeway and was struck by a gray Ford Expedition, traveling about 50 to 60 mph in the fast lane, according to the CHP.
Minutes later, Monrovia Fire & Rescue responded to a call of a vehicle collision with a pedestrian.
A motorist, Vincent Enriquez, said he saw the man still alive soon after he was struck.
“By the time I was passing by … he must’ve been struck no more than a few minutes prior,” he said. “He was still moving.”
An ambulance took the victim, Montoya, to a hospital. He was a day laborer originally from Guatemala, according to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which added that his family is aware of his death.
Monrovia resident Karen Suarez said she rushed to the Home Depot as soon as she heard about the raid and met a woman who identified herself as the daughter of the man who was hit by a car.
“She was visibly very upset, and she was going to go to the hospital and try to find out about her dad,” Suarez said. “I feel so bad for her. I feel so bad for the families. These are people trying to escape whatever horrible atrocities they came from for a better life.”
Consulate officials said they haven’t been able to contact the man’s family.
At 6 p.m., a crowd of about 50 people rallied in front of the Home Depot, waving Mexican flags, carrying signs that read “ICE out of L.A.” and chanting, “When Trump says get back, we say fight back.”
A bouquet of flowers and two prayer candles were placed opposite the 210 Freeway as a memorial for the man who was killed.
CHP officers were asking for surveillance camera video from businesses as part of their investigation.
Feik said in a statement that the city had not received any communication or information from ICE.
Palmira Figueroa, director of communications for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said 13 people were detained in the raid.
Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the network, said another day laborer was struck by what he believed was an immigration agent in a vehicle.
“His leg is very swollen, and he doesn’t want to go to the doctor because he’s afraid of going to the hospital right now,” he said.
Alvarado said it wasn’t clear whether the immigration agents identified themselves or presented warrants.
“They think that [Home Depot] is a good place where they can come to arrest as many people as they can and comply with their quotas, the quotas that the president, [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller are imposing on them,” he said.
A spokesperson for Home Depot referred all questions about the raid to the federal government and said the hardware store is not notified about immigration raids, nor was the company involved in the operation in Monrovia.
World & Nation
The farmworker who suffered fatal injuries while fleeing an immigration raid in Ventura County was buried in his Mexican hometown.
Romero, the UCLA professor, said the Home Depot operation appeared to be in violation of the federal court order barring the government from carrying out these types of raids. Last month, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing federal agents from carrying out indiscriminate immigration arrests based on a person’s race, language, vocation or location.
Immigrant rights advocates voiced their anger after Thursday’s death.
“We hold the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the Home Depot responsible for his death, and they must be held accountable,” said Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, an immigrant rights group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps.
“This is a painful reminder for us that we must continue to boycott the Home Depot due to their complicity to the ICE raids at their stores,” he said. “The Home Depot and the agents that chased the man have blood on their hands.”
In July, Jaime Alanís Garcia, 57, was killed during an immigration raid at a farm in Ventura County. The circumstances of his death are still not fully clear, but it sparked concern among immigration advocates.
Alanís’ family said he was fleeing immigration agents at the Glass House Farms cannabis operation in Camarillo when he climbed atop a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet, suffering catastrophic injury.
But the Department of Homeland Security said that Alanís was not among those being pursued and that federal agents called in a medevac for him.
Home Depots, where immigrant laborers gather in search of work, have been the scene of numerous immigration raids across the region beginning this year.
Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
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