A man who died fleeing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week was not the subject of a removal order, a source close to his family tells The Virginian-Pilot.

Josué Castro Rivera, 24, was struck and killed by a pickup truck when he ran onto the 264 Interchange near Military Highway while attempting to flee ICE. The agents had stopped a work van carrying Castro Rivera and three other men to a work site around 11 a.m. on Oct. 23.

Fearing for his safety, Castro Rivera attempted to evade agents by running into oncoming traffic.

According to Patricia Bracknell, who is in touch with his family, Castro Rivera, a Honduran national, did not have an order for removal or criminal case pending at the time of his death.

“He didn’t even have a traffic ticket,” Bracknell said.

Being undocumented is a civil, not criminal, violation. Arrests may follow the acquisition of an administrative warrant. Though it does not need to be signed by a judge, it must lay out probable cause for the arrest.

However, immigration legal experts say many ICE arrests are warrantless. It is common for ICE to patrol and detain people based on their appearance, the language they are speaking or their location, such as at a work site — and to ask questions about their status later.

On Sep. 8, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s ban on racial profiling in immigration enforcement. ProPublica has identified more than 170 U.S. citizens who were wrongly detained by ICE this year.

For Castro Rivera, it was a case of “wrong place, wrong time,” says Bracknell.

Andrew Reigel, an immigration attorney in Virginia Beach, says that it is common for ICE to patrol for white work trucks carrying Latino workers on their way to job sites.

“It’s fairly typical that [ICE is] going to Home Depot, stopping work trucks,” said Reigel.

He added that it was “highly unlikely” that Castro Rivera would have had a removal order against him without knowing it. Reigel said he did not show up in a search of the Virginia court record system and did not have a criminal record.

According to Bracknell, the other three men in the van with Castro Rivera were detained at the scene. One man, a Honduran national, has allegedly been deported to Honduras. The other men, a Honduran national and a Guatemalan national, remain in an ICE detention facility.

At the time of the incident, ICE said in a press release that they made the Oct. 23 stop “as part of a targeted, intelligence-based immigration enforcement operation.”

“Upon determining the vehicle’s occupants were in the United States illegally, officers began detaining the occupants of the targeted vehicle,” the release said.

However, Bracknell was told by members of the men’s families that none of the four men were the subject of a removal order at the time of Thursday’s raid.

ICE has not provided any additional details about their investigations into the four men.

Community members have rallied to support Castro Rivera’s family. Joana Montano, owner of Flawless Beauty Studio in Norfolk, organized a GoFundMe on behalf of his brother, Jenrry. The fund had raised over $11,000 as of Wednesday.

“We are not here to judge—only to imagine the fear and desperation he must have felt in those final moments,“ reads the campaign’s description.

Castro Rivera came to the United States four years ago and was working to send money back to his family in Honduras, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

The Honduran Consulate will pay to repatriate Castro Rivera’s remains to Honduras, according to Bracknell.

Emma Rose Brown, 757-805-2256, emma.brown@virginiamedia.com

https://www.dailypress.com/2025/10/29/josue-castro-rivera-ice/