To the more than 300 people gathered at the corner of Mountain East Evergreen avenues in Monrovia, the man who died after he ran onto the 210 Freeway in Monrovia and was hit by an SUV now has a name.
Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez was a 52-year-old from Guatemala. He lived in Arcadia, official said. The throng gathered Friday at the Monrovia Home Depot to mourn him and to call for an end to the Trump Administration’s recent amped-up immigration enforcement.
Montoya Valdez’s identity was confirmed by the Guatemalan consulate, said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, who was at the Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia on Friday. Montoya Valdez is from Jutiapa, Guatemala, he said.
Alvarado said he believes the man has a cousin living in the area. An official with the consulate couldn’t be reached for comment on Friday afternoon.
The California Highway Patrol is investigating how and why the man ended up on the freeway.
ICE agents were at the Home Depot in Monrovia that morning but Department of Homeland Security officials on Friday denied officers chased the man.
“This individual was not being pursued by any DHS law enforcement,” according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security. “We do not know their legal status. We were not aware of this incident or notified by California Highway Patrol until hours after operations in the area had concluded.”
Also see: Man fleeing from ICE raid in Monrovia fatally struck on 210 Freeway
Even if authorities were not chasing Montoya Valdez, if masked men showed up, the instinct is to run, Alvarado said. “It’s scary.”
Everybody would run, not just day laborers, according to Alvarado.
“They say they want to protect public safety. Their own operations endanger public safety,” Alvarado said.
The CHP received reports at 9:48 a.m. Thursday about a crash involving a Ford Expedition and a pedestrian blocking a traffic lane on the 210 Freeway, east of Myrtle Avenue, in Monrovia.
The man was running north across all eastbound lanes when he was struck by an SUV in the far left lane traveling about 50 to 60 mph, a CHP statement said.
Jeff Nunez, 51, of Brentwood, was driving the Expedition.
The pedestrian, who suffered major injuries, died at a hospital, CHP officials said.
The crash, including circumstances surrounding how and why the pedestrian was on the freeway, remains under investigation by the CHP’s Baldwin Park Area.
As of Friday afternoon, the medical examiner’s office had not yet publicly identified the pedestrian killed.
There were five men waiting for work at the Home Depot parking lot on Mountain Avenue shortly before noon on Friday. Two stood under a tree. One was sitting in a pickup truck and later approached by two other men.
The man in the pickup, who didn’t want his name used in this report, said he has known the man who died yesterday as “Carlos” for two years. He was at the Home Depot on Thursday and saw Carlos, where agents tried to detain Carlos in the parking lot. He left and didn’t know how Carlos got on the freeway.
One of the men standing under the tree also declined to give his name.
“Everybody (is) looking for work here,” the man said. “(They) don’t want to talk about this.”
Duarte Mayor Cesar Andres Garcia said he spoke to Montoya Valdez’s roommate, who said family was mobilizing to transfer Valdez’s remains to Guatemala, where his daughters and a grandson live. Garcia said he and others were working to connect the family with the Guatemalan Consulate.
The incident sparked protests on Thursday at the scene of the ICE raid. Demonstrators voiced outrage over the death and called for an end to the continued immigration enforcement operations taking place in and around Los Angeles.
Garcia also issued a statement Thursday, adding that City of Hope staff turned immigration enforcement officers away at the Duarte campus the same day.
“The thought that someone looking for work and to provide for their family lost their life in this manner is heartbreaking,” Garcia said.
Federal operations began in early June throughout the county, fueled by President Donald Trump’s pledge to mass deport undocumented immigrants. But since then, armed, masked federal agents have descended on communities large and small in a dragnet that has frightened many residents in the region, and hit immigrant-dependent industries particularly hard.
The Trump administration has hailed the crackdown as a success, pointing to an array of arrests throughout the country of immigrations with serious criminal records.
The raids had been halted in July by a federal judge’s order, upheld by an appeals court, that limited the kind of stops federal agents can make — the kind based solely on apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or the type of work a person does.
The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, based in Pasadena, will hold the vigil at The Home Depot store at 6 p.m.
“The worker was fleeing an unannounced raid by immigration agents, the latest in an ongoing wave of violent, chaotic kidnappings and assaults that ICE and other agencies are waging at Home Depots and other locations across Southern California,” according to a statement from the group.
On Thursday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, issued a statement decrying the raids and referenced the death, which was in her district.
“President Trump’s terror campaign has taken another life,” she said, while also offering her condolences to the man’s family.
“There is such incredible fear in our immigrant communities, so much so that people will run into freeway traffic out of fear when all they want is a chance to support their family and seek the American Dream,”
Pérez called for an end to what she described as violent and sweeping.
“The Trump Administration is violating a federal court order by continuing to conduct deadly roving immigration raids within the area of the U.S. District Court’s Central District of California that includes Los Angeles County,” she stated. “These raids have been ruled to be illegal racial profiling by a federal judge and the Trump Administration has been ordered to comply with a temporary restraining order.”
Pérez has been an advocate for comprehensive immigration law reform.
“How many more brown-skinned people have to die before the president will obey the law?” she asked. “There is a better way. Comprehensive immigration reform that both parties work on is the only solution. I renew my call to pursue this path and stop the terror.”
Homeland Security officials have repeatedly defended the work of ICE agents, denying allegations that operations are carried out randomly.
“Every single one of our ICE and Border Patrol operations is built on information, on investigative work,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday during an appearance on Fox News when asked about a downtown Los Angeles raid conducted outside a building where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference.
She said ICE agents conduct operations at specific locations “because of who they think could be in that area and what they have for information that shows there are illegal criminals there. Remember we’re focusing on the worst of the worst.”
“We extend our condolences for the individual and his family,” said a statement from Monrovia City Manager Dylan Feik on Thursday. “We also express our appreciation to the Monrovia Police Department and its volunteers, Monrovia Fire & Rescue as well as the California Highway Patrol.”
The CHP was continuing its investigation into the circumstances surrounding how and why the pedestrian ran onto the freeway, according to a CHP statement. Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact Officer J. Rosas, during business hours, at .
City News Service contributed to this report.