HOUSTON — A man who was injured when an ICE officer’s car ran over him has undergone surgery on his leg but needs additional procedures to reconstruct the leg and other parts of his body, an advocate for the man said Monday.
Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, suffered leg and hip injuries and a broken ankle after the officer’s vehicle struck him during a pursuit Saturday, said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of FIEL, who spoke on Parra’s behalf. Parra cannot put weight on his leg for six weeks and must wait for the swelling to go down before doctors can perform additional surgery, he said at a news conference Monday.
Espinosa said Parra – who had gotten out of a vehicle and was on foot – was beaten “in a violent and brutal manner.”
ICE said they attempted to stop the vehicle and the people in the car fled. The police attempted to apprehend the fleeing men and “Miguel Parra Hernández ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck,” the statement said.
He said Parra was not the target of the attempted arrest.
Espinosa said Parra told him he fled because it was unclear whether 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 heading in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy road. The video shows a vehicle crossing a yellow median and heading in the direction Parra indicated. is running.
It then appears to show the vehicle, unmarked, swerving to the left towards Chemin de Parra, in front of a truck stopped in the shopping center. The parked truck leaves and a man can be seen on the sidewalk behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for additional comment.
Parra was at a Houston-area hospital Monday morning when his attorney and Espinosa visited him, Espinosa said. But they only had 10 or 15 minutes before ICE agents came in and began recording their conversation and deported them, said Parra’s attorney, Kim Bruno.
“To add insult to injury, Mr. Miguel is in the custody of the ICE agents who ran him over,” Espinosa said. “It’s so disheartening and so irritating that Miguel has to deal with people who brutally attacked them every day, 24 hours a day.”
Parra has lived in the United States for 34 years, arriving when he was 14, and he has no criminal record, Bruno told NBC News. DHS said he was in the country without legal authorization.
Bruno said he never had any contact with immigration authorities. He and the man in the car were doing stucco work, she said.
Neither Parra nor the other man in the car were targets of ICE during Saturday’s traffic stop, Bruno and Espinosa said.
ICE identified the man it targeted as José Mendoza Cervantes, who it said is not in the country legally and has been deported twice and entered the United States illegally five times. He said Mendoza Cervantes had been arrested several times for drunken driving and once for illegal possession of a firearm and was under active deportation 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 Harris County District Attorney’s Office Civil Rights Division sent investigators to the intersection where Parra was hit, said Damali Keith, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said it is leading the investigation into what it described Saturday as a “self-pedalling” incident, with assistance from the Harris County Prosecutor’s Office.
Parra was hit less than two weeks after the Trump administration issued guidelines setting stricter rules for vehicle checks.
The guidelines state that only officers with specific training should conduct vehicle stops. The memo also states that vehicles used for traffic stops must be equipped with lights and sirens and that all officers present at the scene of traffic stops must wear and activate their body cameras.
Gn usa
