Texas prosecutor considers criminal charges against ICE agent who ran over man | Texas

A Texas prosecutor said he is considering felony assault charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who ran over a man following an attempted traffic stop and broke his leg in several places.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said video of the Saturday morning incident west of Houston, in which the officer’s unmarked SUV is seen driving toward the man as he fled through an empty parking lot, could support a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

A conviction carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

“It’s pretty obvious that this was an intentional collision and crushing of the person by the vehicle,” Teare told NBC News, adding that his view was shared by “many other investigators” who had seen the footage.

The injured man, Miguel Parra-Hernandez, remained under ICE guard at a Houston hospital Wednesday with serious hip and leg injuries that his representatives said would require a series of future surgeries.

ICE admitted the 48-year-old man was not the target of the traffic stop, but said he was in the country illegally.

The video showed the agent pursuing Parra-Hernandez in his vehicle, in apparent violation of new traffic stop guidelines implemented this month after a series of violent and deadly confrontations involving federal immigration agents over the summer.

Teare is investigating the incident with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which said an ICE agent moved the Parra-Hernandez van and another unidentified person was in it, then left the scene in the ICE vehicle before sheriff’s deputies arrived.

The prosecutor told NBC that ICE was refusing to cooperate and denied its investigators’ request to access information from the vehicle’s data recorder.

“Our office began drafting a search warrant that we were in the process of drafting when the ICE agent in question, the one we believe was driving at the time of the collision, jumped in the car and drove it away from the scene,” Teare said.

“In my 20-year career, I’ve never heard of anything like this. (You) put it on a flatbed trailer and take it to forensically download it.”

He said he believed two other people from “an entirely different operation” were in custody in the back of the ICE vehicle when the driver began pursuing Parra-Hernandez, and that his office was working to ensure they remained in the country to provide evidence as material witnesses.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 20 years. There’s not a single agency in the United States that teaches that once you take people into custody in your car, then you start chasing other people,” Teare said.

“Everyone was in danger again.”

His team, he added, has gathered evidence that “goes beyond” the surveillance videos released by several local media outlets, and has set up a portal for videos or photographs of the incident that does not require witnesses to provide citizenship or immigration information.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Over the weekend, an agency spokesperson said the target of the morning operation was another man, José Mendoza-Cervantes, an undocumented immigrant who had already been arrested several times and had received a final deportation order signed by a judge.

At a news conference Monday, Kim Bruno, Parra-Hernandez’s attorney, and Cesar Espinosa, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Fiel Houston, told reporters that he had never met Mendoza-Cervantes.

Bruno said his client fled because he did not know who was in the dark-colored vehicle that did not use lights or sirens. He has no criminal record and was on his way to work when ICE agents showed up, she said.

NBC cited an ICE spokesperson who said allegations that Parra-Hernandez was intentionally struck were “reckless and false” and “disgusting smears…peddled by the media.”

“The men and women of ICE are responsible for upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and ethical conduct,” the spokesperson said.