Day Laborer Dies Fleeing ICE: Family Mourns, Community Demands Answers

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Family and community members are mourning 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who died while attempting to escape an anti-immigrant raid at a Home Depot in California last week. Montoya, a day laborer who had lived and worked in the United States for about three years, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing across a nearby freeway. Democracy Now! speaks with Montoya's wife and daughter, Ana María Vásquez and Ana Victoria Montoya, at their home in Guatemala. "We want people to remember my dad in the same way we will remember him: as a loving, respectful, brave man," says Ana Victoria. "He died because of these injustices, this persecution."

At least two men have now died while attempting to flee the Trump administration's massive expansion of federal immigration enforcement. Authorities have yet to confirm which agencies or groups were behind the raid. "If it was indeed a fact that Roberto Carlos was being chased by an individual into the highway, the community, the family, needs to know the truth. We need to, most of all, bring justice," says Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON is calling on Home Depot to release any video footage it has, and demanding an immediate and full investigation of the events that led to Montoya's death.

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