HOUSTON — A Texas prosecutor says federal immigration agents ran over a man on purpose and may have let the evidence disappear. The man, Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, is recovering from multiple fractures. He is in the custody of the agency that hit him.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, a Democrat, said video gathered by local investigators shows “an intentional striking and running over of the person by the vehicle,” which he called aggravated assault with a deadly weapon under Texas law, according to NBC News. No charges had been filed. ICE called the allegation “RECKLESS and FALSE.”
Since Saturday morning there have been two accounts of the same few seconds, one piece of video and a vehicle data recorder that Teare says may have been wiped.
Teare says ICE refused a request to download the recorder in the Jeep Cherokee and that an agent drove the vehicle away while investigators were drafting a search warrant, NBC News reported. He says the federal government is not cooperating and that critical data may have been erased. Two other people who were in the back seat, from what he described as an entirely different operation, are also in ICE custody, and his office wants all three kept in the country as material witnesses.
ICE first said Parra “ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck,” and that agents were targeting another man, Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who escaped, according to CBS News. A Harris County sheriff’s investigator told CBS an ICE agent hit the passenger while trying to capture him. On Tuesday an ICE spokesperson called the intentional-strike claims “disgusting smears” pushed by the media and cited large increases in assaults and vehicle attacks on officers, but offered no data. A DHS official said multiple officers wore body cameras and ICE is reviewing the video.
Parra’s attorney and family say he has no criminal record, while ICE says he is in the country illegally. Cesar Espinosa, who leads the immigrant rights group FIEL, said: “To add insult to injury, Mr. Miguel is in the custody of the ICE agents who ran him down.” Advocates say Parra has had surgery on one leg and faces more operations. EH reported a similar demand for an independent probe after an ICE shooting in Austin in September.
None of the reports EH could read names the agent who was driving, and none explains how a state charge would proceed against a federal officer whose agency holds both the injured man and the vehicle.
