It was 7am on 13 July this year. A warm, sunny morning, as residents of Biddeford, Maine, left their homes, got into their cars and began their commute. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero came out of the apartment he lived in with his partner and daughter and drove off in his white car. Minutes later, neighbors heard three pops. Durán Guerrero was dead.

More than 1,200 miles (1,900km) away in Ocilla, Georgia, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva was shuffled on to a bus. Private sector guards and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were beginning the process of transferring him and several other immigrants from one detention center to another nearly two hours away. Ten minutes into the ride, he became unconscious. Doctors at a nearby hospital pronounced him dead.

Less than 24 hours later, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, pulled up to a gas station near a busy highway in St Augustine, Florida, as the sun was rising in the bright sky. Soon after, he would lie dead on the road nearby, hit by a semitruck when running away from immigration officers.