Man Who Died Running From ICE Was Tourist With a Ticket Home
https://newrepublic.com/post/213277/man-died-running-from-ice-tourist-visa
Man Who Died Running From ICE Was Tourist With a Ticket Home
The man has been identified as Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, who was in the U.S. on a tourist visa and already had a plane ticket to go back to Mexico.
The 28-year-old Mexican man who was killed while running from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials last week was visiting the country on a valid tourist visa.
Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran was in a car with three other people on July 14 when ICE and Homeland Security agents pulled them over near State Road 16 in St. Augustine, Florida. Coronilla Duran fled the scene on foot and was hit by a semi-truck as he attempted to cross the highway.
His wife, Yésica Alamilla López, told reporters that Coronilla Duran had only just recently arrived in the U.S.
“He had a tourist visa and had been here in the United States for a short time—only three weeks,” she told Spectrum News after arriving at the Orlando airport from Mexico. “He had been in Florida for just two days.”
Isaret Jeffers, the founder of Orlando-based farmworkers’ advocacy group Colectivo Arbol, has been assisting Alamilla López in the wake of her husband’s death. Jeffers told the Miami Herald Monday that at the time of his death, Coronilla Duran was planning to return to Mexico within days.
“He was going to return this past Saturday. He had already bought a flight,” Jeffers told the paper. “Now, unfortunately, if he is returning, his return is different.”
Jose Rivera, a local garbage truck driver who witnessed Coronilla Duran’s demise, told the Herald that the 28-year-old slipped and fell when he reached a small piece of grass in the median of the highway. Coronilla Duran reportedly picked himself up but stumbled into the oncoming traffic.
“The traffic was coming pretty quick, and he just lost his footing and didn’t look where the traffic was coming,” Rivera said. “He kept looking back.”
Alamilla López told the Herald that she and her husband were married for 10 years and share a seven-year-old son and a seven-month-old daughter together. They also run a small business in San Luis de La Paz. She revealed to the paper that she had only come to learn of her husband’s death while watching television.
Coronilla Duran’s death is the latest in a long string of domestic bloodshed by ICE and its affiliates. Just this month, federal agents have shot and killed at least two people: Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was killed in Biddeford, Maine, and was targeted despite having a valid work permit and Social Security number, as well as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small-business owner who was killed in Houston.
There have been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda.
Tom Homan Whines That “Hateful Rhetoric” Will Lead to ICE Deaths
Trump’s border czar is fuming over people calling ICE agents fascists and Nazis.
Tom Homan, President Trump’s “border czar,” blames Immigration and Customs Enforcement casualties on the “hateful rhetoric” against the agency.
“I said this a year ago—if the hateful rhetoric doesn’t stop, there will be bloodshed. And unfortunately I was right. And I’ll tell you something else: It’s not over yet,” Homan said to reporters outside of the White House Monday, accusing critics of continuing to attack and “miscommunicating what ICE does every day.”
“Comparing ICE to the Nazi regime—are you kidding me?” Homan continued, claiming that these words embolden people to “do something stupid.”
“I’m afraid that we’re going to bury an ICE agent. I’m afraid that I’m going to hand another folded flag to a spouse or child of an ICE agent for simply doing his job. And for any member of Congress who keeps attacking ICE and calling them fascists and Nazis, I said a thousand times, if there are Nazis enforcing the laws, what’s that make them? They wrote the law,” Homan added, his voice rising.
The people ICE has killed this year include U.S. citizens, such as Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota, and immigrants with legal status who weren’t even the actual targets for immigration violations, such as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Homan seems incredibly blasé about their deaths, and puts the hypothetical death of an ICE agent (which hasn’t happened at all in Trump’s second term) on a higher level than the deaths of innocent people.
In addition to killing people, ICE agents are also committing violent acts on a regular basis, from tackling a person at Las Vegas’s airport to shooting a protesting clergyman in the head with a pepper ball. They also have been accused of racial profiling, even winning a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court to consider race and ethnicity in their operations. If Homan is mad about ICE being compared to fascists and Nazis, perhaps he should be concerned about what agents are actually doing.
Trump Border Czar Says ICE Made No Mistakes in Minnesota
So killing two people in Minneapolis wasn’t a mistake?
Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s border czar, denied Monday that mistakes had been made in deadly shootings in Minnesota, and instead blamed the victims of Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings for causing their own deaths.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Homan made the shocking remark while complaining that Democratic lawmakers had wrongfully withheld Department of Homeland Security funding over what they claimed were “mistakes” made during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
“They kept going to Minnesota, all the mistakes they say happened in Minnesota. I don’t think there’s a lot of—the mistakes they claimed in Minnesota, a lot of them were I don’t think mistakes,” Homan stammered.
It seems that Homan hoped to blame the lack of body cameras in a recent shooting in Maine on Democrats. Instead, he suggested that federal immigration agents had not erred when they shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens who were protesting against ICE’s operations in Minneapolis. When a reporter pressed Homan repeatedly on his outrageous claim, the immigration chief struggled to dodge the question.
“No, I went to Minnesota and I said day one it was not a perfect operation. There were several chains of command, I had a problem with the targeting,” Homan said.
Backed into a corner, Homan laid out why he believed these people deserved to die.
“It comes down to one simple fact—these people failed to comply with law enforcement. Even some of the major chiefs in this country, who don’t necessarily agree with this administration, say you gotta always comply with law enforcement,” Homan said.
“All they had to do was simply comply with law enforcement. If you don’t like what law enforcement did to you, then go to the courts. Sue. Call ACLU. Do whatever you want to do. You should always comply with law enforcement. If they did, they’d be alive today,” he added.
Homan forgets that in the United States, failing to comply with law enforcement is not punishable by death. Federal immigration officers are similarly welcome to go to the courts and let the criminal justice system hand down decisions on fines and jail time for those who resist arrest or evade law enforcement. Instead, spurred by the Trump administration’s fanaticism, they are killing people.
Since Trump returned to office, launching a widely unpopular mass deportation scheme, federal immigration officers have shot and killed 11 people.
Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man legally in the United States, while he drove with his three-year-old daughter in Maine. The week before that, an ICE agent shot and killed longtime Houston resident and father of three Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while he was driving. Federal agents claimed that he tried to ram the officers—a claim that eyewitnesses denied and that has crumbled under the slightest scrutiny.
White House Brags About Nonexistent Iran Deal as U.S. Death Toll Rises
Compare what the White House is officially saying to what Trump is saying (and doing).
President Trump took to Truth Social to make unhinged threats of death and destruction against Iran just minutes after touting a nonexistent peace deal with the country.
“Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” The president wrote Monday afternoon on Truth Social. “This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.”
This outburst—which ignores the fact that the U.S. started the war, killed Iranian leaders and civilians, and attacked critical infrastructure—came after two American soldiers were killed and one went missing following an Iranian attack on a U.S. base in Jordan on Friday. A third U.S. service member was also killed in northern Iraq over the weekend, bringing the number of American casualties to 17. The U.S. has bombed Iran for nine straight days.
Three hours prior to Trump’s threat, the official White House X account posted an unattributed poll showing that 60 percent of voters support President Trump’s peace deal with Iran. The poll is captioned “TRUST IN TRUMP: Voters Overwhelmingly Support Iran Peace Deal.”
Even if this poll is accurate, there is no peace deal whatsoever. An initial memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran collapsed earlier this month, after just three weeks. To brag about a peace deal after nine days of bombings—and a threat to kill “many times over”—shows just how incapable Trump is of being any kind of wartime president.
Judge Hands Trump Ally Massive Blow in Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín determined the merger likely violated antitrust laws.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the proposed $110 billion merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, determining that the combination of the two megacorporations would violate antitrust laws.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a 14-day restraining order on the transaction Monday. Martínez-Olguín ruled that the two companies should not be allowed to finalize the deal, agreeing with a 12-state coalition (led by California) that merging the media behemoths would result in higher consumer prices, produce fewer movies and TV shows, and ultimately “substantially lessen competition.”
“Plaintiff States’ showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief,” the judge wrote.
“Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case,” Martínez-Olguín continued. “The balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”
Paramount disagreed with the judge’s determination. “We will vigorously defend the transaction and demonstrate that this challenge is inconsistent with sound competition policy and the competitive realities of the media marketplace,” Paramount said in a statement.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta praised the decision, describing it as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.”
“History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people,” Bonta said in a statement shortly after the ruling was announced. “With our lawsuit, we’re fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case.”
The merger would have fused two gargantuan film studios, two streaming platforms, and two news organizations under the helm of David Ellison, the millennial son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, who’s a close friend of Donald Trump.
The decision has put Paramount executives in a bind: the company placed a bet against time, promising Warner Bros. shareholders 25 cents a share each quarter if the deal isn’t wrapped by September 30. That could potentially penalize Paramount by more than $600 million per quarter.
The gamble may have seemed less perilous earlier this year, when the younger Ellison was courting Trump while his administration weighed whether or not to approve the merger at the federal level. Ellison hosted a much-critized private dinner “honoring the Trump White House” on April 23. Trump attended, as did Secretary of State Marco Rubio, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Seven weeks later, the Justice Department’s antitrust division granted regulatory clearance by closing its investigation into the merger.
The younger Ellison transitioned from a major Hollywood producer to a media mogul almost overnight last year when his company Skydance merged with Paramount in a deal predicated on an $8 billion investment. The deal made Ellison chairman and CEO of a combined entity that owns the CBS network, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, Skydance Animation, and more.
Paramount Skydance came to an agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year when it undermined a previous deal between Warner Bros. and Netflix by offering an all-cash bid to buy the company with $31 per share.
The deal would have also granted Ellison control of CNN, TBS, TNT, HBO, Cinemax, Discovery, HGTV, and more.
This story has been updated.
Trump Seeks Journalists’ Phone Records as Air Force One Tantrum Grows
Donald Trump’s administration is trying to acquire the phone records of multiple New York Times journalists and their relatives.
Donald Trump’s administration demanded the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their families in an effort to track down the sources who spilled on the president’s new Air Force One.
Late last week, the Department of Justice told the publication it had issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers in order to acquire records of journalists’ phone calls and text messages—including messages with one reporter’s mother and two reporters’ spouses, the Times reported Monday.
Those subpoenas were issued in addition to ones earlier this month compelling the reporters to testify before a grand jury. Lawyers for the Times journalists filed a motion Saturday to quash the new subpoenas.
White House officials were left fuming earlier this month after the Times reported that Trump had ditched his Qatari-gifted Air Force One in Europe because it was missing certain security and communications capabilities. Trump claimed that U.S. forces in Europe were clamoring for a chance to see the magnificent plane.
But it seems the Times’ reporting was right on the money: The president announced plans Sunday to further “max out” Air Force One, suggesting that the $400 million luxury jumbo jet had insufficient security features.
The Air Force has already spent roughly $400 million on renovating the plane, changing the cabin layout, communications system, and security upgrades. That doesn’t account for the taxpayer-funded continued maintenance of the plane, either. The jet—one of the largest presidential gifts ever—will be moved to Trump’s presidential library foundation in 2029, where it may be available for him to use as a private citizen.
This story has been updated.
State Department Targets Hasan Piker, Ilhan Omar’s Daughter, and DSA
A new State Department report on Cuba goes after American citizens on the left.
The State Department is trying to smear left-wing organizations and activists as “front groups and fellow travelers” for the Cuban government.
In a report published Monday titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” the State Department singled out political commentator-streamer Hasan Piker, Amazon union leader Christian Smalls, the Democratic Socialists of America, and environmental activist Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, for allegedly supporting the Cuban government.
“This constant stream of Western left-wing activists, influencers and organizers is coordinated by a network of Cuba-backed nonprofits, foundations, academic and cultural partnerships, and even dedicated U.S.-based travel agencies,” the report said, mentioning the activists’ visits to the island.
The report also asserts that the DSA, an organization claiming over 120,000 members, “maintains a fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime—not because the group is controlled by Cuban agents, per se, but because that commitment is now simply the de facto policy orthodoxy on the American far left.”
It seems to be part of the administration’s attack on “far-left political terrorism,” coupled with an attempt to engineer regime change in Cuba, both led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Under his watch, the U.S. government has taken the decades-long economic embargo against Cuba and escalated it into a de facto oil blockade that has crippled much of the country.
Rubio has refused to answer questions about whether the U.S. plans to invade Cuba or to elaborate on long-term plans for the island. In January, the U.S. military abducted and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an overseas raid and brought him to the U.S. to face trial. Is Cuba headed toward a similar fate? And will the White House brand its left-wing opponents in the U.S. as terrorists who support Cuba?
Hegseth Swapped Key Pentagon Office for AI Before Iran War
The Defense Department is struggling to minimize civilian harm thanks to the changes.
Last January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation and response, or CHMR, workers and replaced them with artificial intelligence.
The Intercept has reported that the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was cut from 40 to just nine staffers at the beginning of last year. No new hires have been made since, leaving the center unable to do its job: protecting civilians from harm due to wars we’re fighting in their regions. Remaining staff also said they are not allowed to investigate incidents like the Minab elementary school bombing that left 120 children dead on the first day of the war in Iran.
CHMR suffered across the Defense Department, as AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and SOUTHCOM saw civilian casualty prevention infrastructure cut, signaling what has been obvious for years: Those casualties are not a moral priority for the United States. CENTCOM’s CHMR has only one person remaining, while cuts to SOUTHCOM’s team left them unable to identify the full scope of civilian harm in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
“The Hegseth regime held on to a thread of the program mostly in effort to be able to say they are following the law, but the reality is the Center and its efforts have had little to no influence on or oversight or visibility on operations,” former Protection Center Chief of civilian harm assessments Wes Bryant told The Intercept. “As long as they sit in the seat, they are continuing to try to put out good work, but the reality is, most of it is being thrown into the wind, and neither institutionalized nor operationalized.”
Now, instead of human beings, Hegseth is relying on a Palantir-created Maven Smart System, which a defense official claimed presents a “better layer of protection” for people living in places we’re currently attacking.
“The Department’s failure to implement the CHMR [Action Plan] has profound consequences for civilians in conflict zones and makes service members’ jobs harder and riskier,” Senator Elizabeth Warren and nine other Democrats wrote in a letter to Hegseth earlier this month. “Gutting CHMR programs leads to ‘target misidentification [that] harms readiness by wasting Do[D] munitions’ and increases the operational risk of ‘civilian casualties, damaged coalitions and alliances, loss of legitimacy, increased local resistance, propaganda opportunities for adversaries, prolonged conflicts, and failed strikes.’”
Thousands of Iranians have been killed since the downsizing of CHMR.
Republicans Try to Ignore Trump’s Deranged Speech on Election Fraud
Many acknowledge that Donald Trump’s message could screw them over in the midterms.
Republican lawmakers are moving on from Donald Trump’s election conspiracy.
The president spent more than 25 minutes last week addressing the public—and his supposed congressional allies—to revive his 2020 election fraud claims. He demanded that Republicans prioritize mail-in ballot bans and voter roll purges, and investigate what he claimed was a nationwide cover-up by the “deep state.” Days later, however, the conservative caucus appears to have completely missed the message.
Most GOP candidates aren’t willing to revisit Trump’s thoroughly debunked election fraud claims as the issue has failed to galvanize voters, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The day after Trump’s address, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley—who is trailing former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in the race to replace retiring North Carolina Senator Thom Thillis—held a 34-minute campaign event that touched on none of Trump’s advertised priorities. Instead, Whatley told local voters that the number one issue this election cycle is “keeping our kids and our communities safe.”
Whatley had previously supported Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims. But when asked by a Post reporter to expound on Trump’s latest speech, Whatley simply mentioned that he is a “big proponent of election integrity.”
Top Republicans also seemed disillusioned with the president’s fixation. Outgoing Texas Senator John Cornyn lamented to the Post that “we have 109 days until the midterm elections, and I don’t understand talking about what happened six years ago in light of these upcoming elections.”
The situation for the campaigning caucus is precarious: If they attempt to get in good with the MAGA movement by publicly supporting the president in an act of fealty, they also risk alienating independent voters in their districts who have become increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s second term.
Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime political adviser to Tillis, told the Post that the “clear and simple” explanation for the difference in messaging is that voters are focused elsewhere.
“If candidates are not talking about the economy, if candidates are not talking about affordability, if they’re not talking about how they’re going to make people’s lives at home cheaper and less expensive, then they’re not talking about the issues that voters care about,” Shumaker said.
Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in the State Department during Trump’s first term, said many GOP candidates seem relieved that Trump’s prime time speech has failed to make major waves.
“If the president makes outrageous claims about an election and no one is listening, did it even happen?” Bartlett asked rhetorically when describing the Republican response to the Post.
Democrats have criticized the address for laying the groundwork for potential challenges to the upcoming midterm elections. They have good cause to believe so: Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that the government already plans to take action against state election officials who refuse to bend to the White House’s demands. In a press conference, Mullin pledged that state officials who decide not to scrub their voter registration lists could be fined or even jailed for their disobedience.
Mullin does not have the authority to make such a threat, however. The Department of Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.
Is Donald Trump Shrinking? An Investigation.
Trump accidentally revealed his real height while crashing Spain’s World Cup victory celebration.
Trump towers?
Donald Trump’s presence loomed large over FIFA’s World Cup Finals on Sunday—but footage from the event has sparked speculation that the president’s actual stature may be smaller than he claims.
For years, Trump has claimed to be six feet, three inches tall. His past two annual physical reports, published in April 2025 and April 2026, confirmed this, asserting that the president is 75 inches tall—equal to six feet, three inches.
But a video shared Sunday on social media by the White House showed Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, the six-foot-three captain of Spain’s national football team known as Rodri, towering over Trump. If both men are supposedly the same height, why does Trump appear so much shorter?
Considering soccer cleats only add about an inch maximum of height, it seems unlikely Rodri’s footwear is responsible for the difference. In the video, Trump appears much closer in height to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is reportedly only five feet, 11 inches tall.
The debate about Trump’s height has been going on for decades. In 1999, Trump told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that his seemingly diminutive stature was merely a trick of the camera. “I photograph short. I’m six foot three,” he said.
As recently as last month, the president appeared much shorter than Republican Senator John Thune, who is widely reported to be six feet, four inches tall. In response to those photographs, The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles suggested that Trump was actually getting shorter. “He’s shrinking into the giant shrimp that Steve Bannon said that he was,” Coles said. “I think that Donald Trump is literally shrinking as we see him.”
It’s certainly not impossible. It’s a scientific fact that people can get shorter as they age, and last month, Trump officially became an octogenarian. Still, the president clearly feels the need to lie about his height, when Americans can see for themselves that the president just doesn’t measure up.
