Two undocumented farmworkers die fleeing immigration officials - who were chasing wrong person

Immigration agents pursued a man who matched a target's description, but it wasn't him

Migrant farmworkers harvest romaine lettuce in King City, California (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)

Two undocumented farmworkers died in California while fleeing immigration agents who were pursuing the wrong person.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrived in the early morning at a house they believed belonged to a Mexican citizen who had previously been deported. When a man exited the house and got into his vehicle, the agents turned on their emergency lights and pulled him over.

But the driver sped away, according to ICE and the Delano Police Department, crashing into a power pole and flipping the vehicle over. Both 35-year-old Santo Hilario Garcia and 33-year-old Marcelina Garcia Profecto were pronounced dead at the scene.

While Mr Garcia had a history of migrating between Mexico and the US - ICE said he was “voluntarily returned” to Mexico three times, which is distinct from deportation, and was removed from the US in 2017 - ICE said he was not the man agents were looking for.

The accident occurred in Kern County, a hub of a vast California agricultural industry that relies heavily on immigrant labour. A March report estimated that there are around 58,500 undocumented immigrants in Kern County out of a statewide population of around 2.6 million people who are in the country illegally.

At a news conference following the crash, United Farmworkers president Arturo Rodriguez said the couple had set out looking for work and left six children behind. He said they “became very scared” because of “their legal status”.

“It’s extremely sad when you see the women and the men who work so hard every day to harvest our fruits and vegetables being abused and exploited”, Mr Rodriguez said, adding that “when they get here they’re abused and exploited, they’re terrorised, they’re intimidated, like happened in this particular case”.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Donald Trump has overseen a sharp rise in arrests of unauthorised migrants, including those who have not been convicted of crimes. (Mr Garcia had been convicted of a DUI).

Critics of the crackdown say the increase has been driven in part by an increase in “collateral arrests”, or situations when ICE agents arrest people other than the immigrants they set out to find and arrest. ICE says it does not collect separate data on collateral arrests.

Breaking from an Obama-era policy that focused immigration enforcement on people who had committed violent crimes or posed public safety threats, the Trump administration has said no immigrants are exempted from deportation.