Two college students were killed after being hit by a drunk driver, an illegal migrant, who fled the scene, police said. Katie Braham, a 20-year-old junior at Ohio University, and her 21-year-old friend, Chloe Polzin, were killed on January 19 in Urbana, Illinois. Their Honda Civic was rear-ended at high speed by another vehicle.
Authorities said that 29-year-old Julio Cucul Bol, a Guatemalan national, had been drinking before the horrific accident. After the fatal crash, Bol fled the scene on foot, leaving Braham and Polzin fatally injured. Three other women managed to survive the crash. This comes as the Trump administration continues to arrest and deport thousands of illegal migrants.
Everything Illegal
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“They were at a stoplight and there was someone who was driving drunk who hit them from behind at full force. And following the accident, he fled on foot,” said Katie’s father Joe Abraham told Fox 32.
According to U.S. Marshals, Cucul Bol was arrested on a bus in Texas just days after the crash while trying to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Braham’s parents have voiced their concerns publicly, calling for stricter measures to monitor who is allowed to enter the country.
President Donald Trump has launched raids aimed at detaining undocumented migrants with criminal records in order to facilitate their deportation.
“I don’t want to get too political because that’s not going to bring Katie back, but certainly, I would like to see more vetting,” her father Joe said.
“He was drinking. He was driving, but… is that who we want when we’re thinking about immigration?”
Families Devastated
Chloe Polzin was a student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she was an active member of the water polo team. She and Katie Braham had been best friends since high school and were using their college break to visit friends at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Meanwhile, Trump introduced new directives over the weekend as part of his plan to intensify large-scale deportations of undocumented migrants. The orders included setting a daily arrest quota for border officials.
According to the Washington Post, during a Saturday call with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, Trump’s staff said the president was unhappy with the current the number of arrests. He reportedly wants the daily count increased from a few hundred to between 1,200 and 1,500 arrests.
ICE field offices were ordered to make 75 arrests per day, with managers being held accountable if the targets are not met.
White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed the reports about the quota as “fake news” but did not provide further clarification.
