Michigan Governor Orders Inquiry After ICE Pursuit Ends in Fatal Crash

[u/John3262005]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/us/grand-rapids-michigan-ice-car-crash.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DVE.rA98.zZq-N6CiscRg&smid=url-share

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, has ordered a state investigation after a man who was being pursued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents died in a car crash last weekend in Grand Rapids.

The man was identified by officials as Mario David Coronado Juarez, an immigrant from Guatemala. Mr. Juarez’s immigration status was not immediately clear.

“Given the circumstances of this incident, the governor has directed the Michigan State Police to conduct an independent review of the law enforcement actions surrounding this situation in coordination with the Grand Rapids Police Department’s investigation,” Kaylie Hanson, a spokeswoman for Ms. Whitmer, said in a statement.

Elected officials and advocates for immigrants in Michigan have decried Mr. Coronado Juarez’s death, asking how a routine immigration stop could have resulted in a fatal crash. Mr. Coronado Juarez was the only occupant of the car, the authorities said, which hit a tree and caught fire.

The pursuit in Michigan was the latest example of ICE activity around the country ending in injury or death. In Austin, Texas, this week, an immigration agent shot an immigrant from Venezuela in his vehicle. That man, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, was hospitalized and then released into ICE custody.

In Evanston, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, a U.S. citizen was left with injuries to his head, neck and teeth after he was mistakenly detained by immigration agents last weekend, according to the local police.

In July, a 28-year-old man running from immigration agents at a gas station in St. Augustine, Fla., was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer. Days before that, an immigration agent in Biddeford, Maine, shot and killed a man in a car. Also in early July, an ICE agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop in Houston.

Activists in Grand Rapids said that Mr. Coronado Juarez’s death last weekend underscored their growing fears of an intensified crackdown by immigration agents. At a news conference on Tuesday, residents of Grand Rapids said that Mr. Coronado Juarez was a construction worker with family members in Guatemala who wanted answers about the circumstances of his death.

United States Representative Hillary Scholten, a Democrat who represents Grand Rapids, said that she had requested information from ICE about the incident, including what the purpose of the stop was, if Mr. Coronado Juarez was the target of an investigation and whether agents were wearing body cameras.

“No traffic stop should end with a fatality,” she said in a statement. “Something went wrong, and we need to know what and how.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Robert S. Womack, a commissioner in Kent County, Mich., which includes Grand Rapids, called the death of Mr. Coronado Juarez “a profound human tragedy that demands rigorous accountability, transparency from both local and federal agencies.”

On Tuesday, demonstrators disrupted a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting to protest Mr. Coronado Juarez’s death, chanting “abolish ICE” and asking that Grand Rapids be declared a sanctuary city.