Texas DA investigating ICE vehicle hitting man; could lead to aggravated assault charge
NBCNews.com reports:
BLUF: Harris County DA Sean Teare said experienced investigators who watched the surveillance video of a car hitting Miguel Parra Hernandez believe the collision was not accidental.
By Suzanne Gamboa, Priscilla Thompson, Julia Ainsley and Carmen Gonzalez
HOUSTON — The district attorney for Harris County, Texas, is investigating whether an ICE agent driving a vehicle, who hit a man who was on foot, could be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News on Tuesday that his office of investigators with years of experience watched surveillance video of the ICE vehicle hitting Miguel Parra Hernandez and believe the collision was not accidental.
Teare’s office announced late Monday that it had launched an independent investigation of the ICE vehicle striking Parra, 48.
The Saturday collision left Parra with leg and hip injuries and a shattered ankle after the officer’s vehicle struck Parra during a pursuit Saturday, said Cesar Espinosa, a co-founder and the executive director of FIEL, a Houston-based immigrant civil rights group, who was speaking on Parra’s behalf at a press conference on Monday.
Parra had surgery on his leg, but needs additional procedures to reconstruct his leg and other parts of his body, Espinosa said. Parra must must wait for swelling to reduce before doctors can perform additional surgery, he said.
Espinosa said Parra — who had gotten out of a vehicle and was on foot — was hit “in a violent and brutal fashion.”
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News on Tuesday that multiple ICE officers on the scene at the time were wearing body cameras. ICE currently is reviewing footage of the scene as part of an internal investigation, the official said.
NBC News has reached out to DHS for a response to the district attorney’s statements. DHS did not respond to a request for comment on Monday following the remarks from Parra’s attorney and advocates.
But in a statement over the weekend, ICE said it attempted a vehicle stop and the people in the car ran away. The officers tried to apprehend the fleeing men, and “Miguel Parra Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck,” the ICE spokesperson stated.
ICE said Parra was not the target of the attempted stop.
Espinosa said Parra told him that he fled because it was unclear there were officials in the vehicles, which he said were unmarked, did not use sirens and had dark, tinted windows.
Video obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. The video shows a vehicle jumping a yellow median and heading in the direction that Parra is running.
It then appears to show the vehicle, which is not marked, swerving left toward Parra’s path, in front of a truck stopped in the shopping center. The parked truck leaves, and a man can be seen on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
Juan Proaño, CEO for the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, said ICE often accuses those arrested of using vehicles as a weapon, but he believes this case shows the opposite.
In previous encounters between ICE and targets of their arrests in vehicle stops, including some who have been killed such as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, ICE has alleged the people they tried to arrest weaponized their vehicle.
Parra was at a Houston area hospital Monday morning when his attorney and Espinosa visited him, Espinosa said. But they had only 10 or 15 minutes before ICE officers came in and began recording their conversation and forced them out, Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno said.
“To add insult to injury, Mr. Miguel is in the custody of the ICE agents who ran him down,” Espinosa said. “This is so disheartening and so angering that Miguel has to face the people that brutally attacked them every single day, 24 hours a day.”
Parra has lived in the U.S. for 34 years, having arrived at age 14, and he has no criminal record, Bruno told NBC News. DHS said he was in the country without legal permission.
Bruno said he has never had encounters with immigration authorities. He and the man with him in the car do stucco work, she said.
Neither Parra nor the other man in the car was the target of ICE in Saturday’s traffic stop, Bruno and Espinosa said.
ICE identified the man it was targeting as Jose Mendoza Cervantes, who it said is not legally in the country and had been removed twice and entered the U.S. illegally five times. It said that Mendoza Cervantes had been arrested multiple times for drunken driving and once for unlawful possession of a firearm and that he had an active removal order.
Bruno and Espinosa countered that neither Parra nor the man in the car with him, whom he had picked up for work, knew Mendoza Cervantes.
The Civil Rights Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sent investigators to the intersection where Parra was hit, said Damali Keith, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
Parra was struck less than two weeks after the Trump administration issued guidance setting tighter rules for vehicle stops.
The guidance says only agents who have completed specific training should make vehicle stops. The memo also says that vehicles used for traffic stops must have lights and sirens and that all officers on the scenes of vehicle stops must wear and activate their body cameras.
BLUF: Harris County DA Sean Teare said experienced investigators who watched the surveillance video of a car hitting Miguel Parra Hernandez believe the collision was not accidental.
By Suzanne Gamboa, Priscilla Thompson, Julia Ainsley and Carmen Gonzalez
HOUSTON — The district attorney for Harris County, Texas, is investigating whether an ICE agent driving a vehicle, who hit a man who was on foot, could be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News on Tuesday that his office of investigators with years of experience watched surveillance video of the ICE vehicle hitting Miguel Parra Hernandez and believe the collision was not accidental.
Teare’s office announced late Monday that it had launched an independent investigation of the ICE vehicle striking Parra, 48.
The Saturday collision left Parra with leg and hip injuries and a shattered ankle after the officer’s vehicle struck Parra during a pursuit Saturday, said Cesar Espinosa, a co-founder and the executive director of FIEL, a Houston-based immigrant civil rights group, who was speaking on Parra’s behalf at a press conference on Monday.
Parra had surgery on his leg, but needs additional procedures to reconstruct his leg and other parts of his body, Espinosa said. Parra must must wait for swelling to reduce before doctors can perform additional surgery, he said.
Espinosa said Parra — who had gotten out of a vehicle and was on foot — was hit “in a violent and brutal fashion.”
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News on Tuesday that multiple ICE officers on the scene at the time were wearing body cameras. ICE currently is reviewing footage of the scene as part of an internal investigation, the official said.
NBC News has reached out to DHS for a response to the district attorney’s statements. DHS did not respond to a request for comment on Monday following the remarks from Parra’s attorney and advocates.
But in a statement over the weekend, ICE said it attempted a vehicle stop and the people in the car ran away. The officers tried to apprehend the fleeing men, and “Miguel Parra Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck,” the ICE spokesperson stated.
ICE said Parra was not the target of the attempted stop.
Espinosa said Parra told him that he fled because it was unclear there were officials in the vehicles, which he said were unmarked, did not use sirens and had dark, tinted windows.
Video obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. The video shows a vehicle jumping a yellow median and heading in the direction that Parra is running.
It then appears to show the vehicle, which is not marked, swerving left toward Parra’s path, in front of a truck stopped in the shopping center. The parked truck leaves, and a man can be seen on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
Juan Proaño, CEO for the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, said ICE often accuses those arrested of using vehicles as a weapon, but he believes this case shows the opposite.
In previous encounters between ICE and targets of their arrests in vehicle stops, including some who have been killed such as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, ICE has alleged the people they tried to arrest weaponized their vehicle.
Parra was at a Houston area hospital Monday morning when his attorney and Espinosa visited him, Espinosa said. But they had only 10 or 15 minutes before ICE officers came in and began recording their conversation and forced them out, Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno said.
“To add insult to injury, Mr. Miguel is in the custody of the ICE agents who ran him down,” Espinosa said. “This is so disheartening and so angering that Miguel has to face the people that brutally attacked them every single day, 24 hours a day.”
Parra has lived in the U.S. for 34 years, having arrived at age 14, and he has no criminal record, Bruno told NBC News. DHS said he was in the country without legal permission.
Bruno said he has never had encounters with immigration authorities. He and the man with him in the car do stucco work, she said.
Neither Parra nor the other man in the car was the target of ICE in Saturday’s traffic stop, Bruno and Espinosa said.
ICE identified the man it was targeting as Jose Mendoza Cervantes, who it said is not legally in the country and had been removed twice and entered the U.S. illegally five times. It said that Mendoza Cervantes had been arrested multiple times for drunken driving and once for unlawful possession of a firearm and that he had an active removal order.
Bruno and Espinosa countered that neither Parra nor the man in the car with him, whom he had picked up for work, knew Mendoza Cervantes.
The Civil Rights Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sent investigators to the intersection where Parra was hit, said Damali Keith, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
Parra was struck less than two weeks after the Trump administration issued guidance setting tighter rules for vehicle stops.
The guidance says only agents who have completed specific training should make vehicle stops. The memo also says that vehicles used for traffic stops must have lights and sirens and that all officers on the scenes of vehicle stops must wear and activate their body cameras.
