A 20-year-old college student walked onto an Ohio interstate and was killed by an oncoming tractor-trailer just weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fitted him with an ankle monitor, according to police and his family.

Pierre Damas Bel, a Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) member and aspiring college athlete, died on the highway in Springfield, Ohio, on the morning of Monday, Aug. 31, Ohio State Highway Patrol said in a press release.

His death comes amid a crackdown following the Supreme Court’s June ruling that allowed President Donald Trump to officially strip roughly 350,000 Haitian immigrants of their deportation protections on July 27.

Pierre Damas Bel.Wittenberg University Men’s Soccer/Facebook

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“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” Bel wrote in a July 30 Instagram post. “Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

“I came here to study, to build my future, and to live a better [life, not] to be treated like criminal. So now, how am I supposed [to] play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?” Bel continued in the post.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from PEOPLE on Tuesday, Sept. 1.

“On July 29, 2026, ICE placed him on alternatives to detention program with an ankle monitor while he continued in his immigration proceedings,” an ICE spokesperson said in an email to PEOPLE, noting Bel entered the country in March 2024. “No one is required to stay in the United States illegally and wear a monitor. Illegal aliens have a lawful, voluntary option: they can self-deport.”

The agency declined to comment further on Bel’s situation and the circumstances of his death.

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Alongside his writing about the “shame and humiliation” he felt, Bel included photos of himself accepting a scholarship from Springfield business leaders in May and standing with his fellow JROTC cadets proudly displaying an award for physical fitness.

Bel graduated from high school in May and was set to begin his first semester at Ohio’s Wright State University after being unable to play college soccer at Springfield’s Wittenberg University due to his requirement to wear the ankle monitor, the Wittenberg men’s soccer team said in a Facebook post.

Bel was “treated like an animal” after receiving his ankle monitor, his father said in a statement, per WSYX.

“He took 2 trips to Cincinnati and Westerville to plead to the officers to remove the bracelet since he’s a soccer player and he felt embarrassed and humiliated when he’s among his classmates at the University,” Bel’s father wrote in a handwritten statement shared on X. “Last Friday, August 28, 2026, he told me, ‘Dad I felt humiliated. Since they gave uniforms to all my classmates at JROTC their uniform, but except me because of the bracelet.’ ”

His father told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the incident with the JROTC uniform occurred on Friday. On Monday, Bel left home before 8 a.m. and called shortly after to tell his father he wasn’t “feeling okay” mentally.

“I told him, ‘Come home so that we can talk?’ I had my youngest to take to school. I took him to school,” his father continued.

By 11 a.m., police were on his doorstep to inform him his 20-year-old son was dead.

Billboards in Springfield, Ohio, reminding people that ICE Agents aren’t above the law and could be prosecuted on Feb 24.Kirk Irwin/Getty
Springfield’s Haitian community became a target of baseless claims from the president and now-Vice President JD Vance during the 2024 campaign, alleging falsely and without evidence that Haitian residents of the city were eating household pets.

Elementary schools, city hall, college campuses, local Walmarts, and hospitals were shut down and evacuated as bomb threats poured into the community in September 2024 after Vance boosted the smears on the campaign trail and Trump mentioned the false conspiracy theory on the debate stage with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” said then Ohio Sen. Vance on CNN at the time. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance campaigns in Leesport, Pa., on Sept. 21, 2024. At the rally, Vance spoke about illegal immigration and repeated claims regarding Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.Matthew Hatcher/Getty
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Immigration officials in the Springfield area have been fitting dozens of Haitian community members with ankle monitors since the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the country, local advocates told The New York Times.

“I’m sitting with a family right now whose son threw himself in front of semi truck today after being teased by fellow students at Wright State about his ankle monitor,” Springfield pastor Carl Ruby, a U.S. citizen born and raised in rural Michigan, wrote of Bel’s death in a Facebook post on Monday.

“I wish President Trump could hear the mom’s wails. The family wants people to know that this was a suicide and they want people to know that President Trump, [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller, and [Homeland Security Secretary] Markwayne Mullin’s inhumane immigration policies made this happen,” the pastor continued.

Spectrum News 1 Ohio, Ohio Capital Journal and other outlets have reported that at least two Haitian pastors in the deeply religious community have been detained by ICE in recent weeks.

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Springfield, Ohio-based Haitian Support Center, prays outside the Supreme Court on March 17.ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty
Many of the roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield have lived in the United States for years, unable to return to their home country as Haiti has suffered years of violence, turmoil and extreme poverty.

Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has at times pushed back at Trump’s demonization of Haitian immigrants in his state, told reporters at the state capitol on Tuesday that Bel’s death was “horrible, horrible tragic” and called the president’s mass deportation agenda “misguided and wrong.”

“He graduated from high school here,” DeWine said. “He was well liked. He was in the junior ROTC. And, I’m told by those that knew him that he had great dreams about what he could do in this country and what he could contribute to this country.”

“I think we need to ask ourselves: Is it really good, is it what we want done, to see people like this picked up and facing deportation?” DeWine continued. “Do we want that being done in our name? My position is that it’s a mistake.”

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