Ensnared By ICE In Austin, Deported Immigrant Winds Up Murdered In Mexico

AUSTIN, TX — Local immigrant advocates are decrying the recent deportation of an immigrant from Austin to Mexico after the man ended up being murdered in his native land upon his forced return.

Juan Coronilla-Guerrero, 28, was among the immigrants ensnared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in February during an unprecedented wave of sweeps sparked by the directive of the Trump administration. Three months after being deported back to Mexico, he wound up dead on the side of a road in San Luis de la Paz, a city in the state of Guanajuato, near the spot where he had been living with his wife's family, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

The newspaper reports the man's wife had pleaded with a federal judge not to have her husband deported for frear he would be killed, according to the report. In hunting Coronilla down by ICE agents in Austin, immigration officials took the unusual step of entering the Travis County courthouse where he was appearing before a judge on an unrelated matter.

Speaking from Mexico, the wife told the Statesman she suspects her husband was killed by members of the same gang that had sparked their flight from Mexico in the first place in an attempt to escape the violence there. The woman told the newspaper four armed men barged into the family home until they found Coronilla, tearing him away from his home.

He was found dead some 40 minutes away from the home, the woman told the newspaper. Officials at immigrant advocacy group Grassroots Leadership said Coronilla had been released from the Travis County Jail after bonding out, and after Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez refused to honor "a constitutionally dubious ICE detainer to hold him for deportation.

Coronilla-Guerrero’s wife spoke out in March following his arrest, warning a federal judge that his deportation would result in him being killed. She told Grassroots Leadership officials then that her husband was arrested while carrying the family's $1,300 in rent money — the one possession ICE agents didn't return to her after handing her his belongings.

The woman (who asked for anonymity for fear of her life) told Grassroots Leadership in March: “My husband was one of the 36 immigrants who could leave the jail under the sheriff and even though he had an immigration order, he wanted to do the right thing and he appeared at his second court date. When he was leaving, immigration agents were waiting for him and took him. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to me, or to his son because now we don’t even know where he is going to be.”

Bethany Carson, an immigration organizers and researcher with Grassroots Leadership who had worked with the dead man's wife and testified at his court hearing subsequent to his deportation, decried the late man's deportation.

“Immigration raids have impacts on individuals and their families that are now often deadly,” Carson said. “The county policy refusing to honor most unconstitutional detainers only protects immigrants in our community if they cannot later be snatched from our courts and our streets. Stopping ICE is now a life-and-death matter. Our local elected leaders must do everything within their power to stop these deportations.”

Grassroots Leadership officials note Coronilla isn't the first immigrant whose death was precipitated following ICE detention. A second man, Felipe Almazan-Ruiz, died in an immigration detention center in Livingston, Texas. in the morning of Sept. 17th. Almazan-Ruiz had lived in the U.S. since 1985 before being transferred to the IAH Polk Detention Center in Livingston from Florida in the lead-up to Hurricane Irma.

According to ICE officials, Almazan-Ruiz died from cardiac arrest after being admitted for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver — marking the 12th death in ICE custody during fiscal year 2017. The immigrant had been transferred to Livingston Memorial hospital and then to the Conroe Regional Medical Center before his death.

Both Grassroots Leadership and the national Detention Watch Network had warned of inadequate medical care and other dangerous conditions in a 2012 report following a tour of the facility.

“Simply put, detention and deportation are a deadly business,” Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, said. “Given the high-profile failings of the detention system in Texas, it is outrageous that the Trump administration is planning a massive new for-profit detention center down the road in Conroe.”

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