A man fleeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ran out onto a busy highway and was struck and killed Thursday in Virginia, authorities said. The incident appeared to be the second time since August that a person was killed by oncoming traffic while attempting to flee ICE agents, according to local officials.
Jose Castro-Rivera died Thursday after ICE officers made a car stop in what a senior Department of Homeland Security official said was a “targeted, intelligence-based immigration enforcement operation.” The official did not include additional details about Castro-Rivera.
Virginia State Police said it responded at 11 a.m. Thursday to a report of a man being struck by a vehicle on Interstate 264 eastbound at the Military Highway interchange in Norfolk.
The DHS official told NBC News that after determining that the occupants were allegedly in the United States illegally, the immigration agents began detaining the people in the car; that's when Castro-Rivera resisted and ran onto a busy highway. The official did not provide additional details about the other people in the car.
“Unfortunately, a passing vehicle struck Castro-Rivera,” the official said, adding that an ICE officer administered CPR to Castro-Rivera, but he died.
Virginia state police said in its statement that troopers found an adult man who had been struck by a vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene.
A preliminary investigation indicated that the man was fleeing a pursuit by ICE when he left his car and attempted to cross the interstate, police said. The Virginia State Police said they were not involved in the pursuit and were only investigating the crash involving the pedestrian.
The crash remains under investigation, it said.
DHS declined to comment Friday about Castro-Rivera’s death and the enforcement operation that agents were conducting at the time. The agency also declined to comment about its policies regarding conducting immigration operations on highways and busy roads.
In August, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez was hit and killed on a freeway in California while he was running from an immigration raid at a Home Depot, according to local authorities.
A DHS spokesperson told NBC News at the time that it was not aware of the incident or notified by California Highway Patrol until hours after operations had concluded.
“This individual was not being pursued by any DHS law enforcement,” the spokesperson said. “We do not know their legal status.”
DHS declined to comment Friday about the August incident in California.
