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Delano police report on fatal crash contradicts ICE agents’ claims they were not pursuing farm worker couple

Hilario Garcia, Marcelina Garcia Porfecto & their six orphaned children ‘casualties’ of Trump targeting ‘hardworking immigrant farm workers’

United Farm Workers Foundation Executive Director and UFW National Vice-President Diana Tellefson Torres issued the following statement after release of the Delano Police Department’s official report on the March 13, 2018 car crash that killed Hilario Garcia and Marcelina Garcia Porfecto:

It is deeply distressing that ICE agents’ statements they were not in pursuit of the Hilario Garcia couple using emergency lights are contradicted by surveillance video showing two ICE SUVs traveling behind the couple’s vehicle with emergency lights activated, according to the Delano Police Department report on the tragedy.

The report appears to support the conclusion that the family’s SUV was traveling at a high rate of speed while desperately trying to evade ICE agents when they lost control, hit a utility pole and the vehicle overturned on its roof.

Why did the two ICE agents choose to misrepresent whether they were in pursuit of the couple? Why did ICE agents choose to pursue the couple after scrutiny of the fatal accident showed ICE representatives admitting the couple was not originally an ICE target?

Santos Hilario Garcia and Marcelina Garcia Porfecto—and their six orphaned children—are casualties of the Trump administration’s targeting of hardworking immigrant farm workers who toil and sacrifice to feed all of us.

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