A 24-year-old Honduran man was killed in Virginia after being struck by a vehicle while fleeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed.
It marks the third fatality this year of a migrant attempting to escape an ICE operation amid a period of record deaths in immigration custody.
Authorities identified the man as José Castro Rivera. According to DHS, ICE officers stopped a vehicle in Norfolk as part of a "targeted, intelligence-based immigration enforcement operation," as ABC News reports.
The agency said Castro Rivera "resisted heavily" before fleeing on foot onto Interstate 264, where he was hit by a 2002 Ford pickup truck and died at the scene. An ICE agent attempted to administer CPR, but the agency said he "perished." DHS declined to provide further details on how Castro Rivera resisted or on the status of the other passengers detained during the stop.
The Virginia State Police said its preliminary findings indicate Castro Rivera exited a vehicle and tried to cross the interstate while fleeing from ICE agents. The agency added that it was not involved in the pursuit and is investigating only the resulting fatal crash.
In a statement, DHS attributed the tragedy partly to what it called "misinformation" circulating about how to evade immigration enforcement. "Sadly, this is the tragic result of such resistance," a spokesperson told ABC News.
Castro Rivera's death follows two other fatalities this year involving immigrants fleeing ICE operations in California, as The Guardian points out. In August, Guatemalan national Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdés, 52, was struck and killed on a freeway near Los Angeles after running from an ICE raid outside a Home Depot. The previous month, Mexican farm worker Jaime Alanís García, 56, fell from a greenhouse roof while trying to escape ICE agents at a cannabis facility in Ventura County.
The incidents come amid the deadliest year in U.S. immigration detention in two decades. An NPR investigation published last week found that at least 20 people have died in ICE custody in 2025 — the highest number since 2004, when 32 deaths were recorded. Former DHS officials told NPR that the agency's rapid expansion, with nearly 60,000 people currently detained, has outpaced its ability to maintain safety and medical oversight.
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