Texas DA says ICE intentionally hit immigrant with a car and may have withheld evidence
Texas DA says ICE intentionally hit immigrant with a car and may have withheld evidence
Texas DA says ICE intentionally hit immigrant with a car and may have withheld evidence
Harris County DA Sean Teare told NBC News his office has collected multiple videos for its own investigation but isn’t getting cooperation from the federal government. ICE denied their agent intentio...
Harris County DA Sean Teare told NBC News his office has collected multiple videos for its own investigation but isn’t getting cooperation from the federal government. ICE denied their agent intentionally hit the person.
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Videos collected by local investigators make it “pretty obvious” that an ICE officer intentionally [ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/houston-man-run-ice-vehicle-will-need-additional-surgery-advocates-say-rcna602971)during an immigration stop Saturday, which could lead to assault charges, the district attorney said Tuesday.
“This was an intentional striking and running over of the person by the vehicle, and in that case, that is an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Texas,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News.
Teare said the federal government is not cooperating with the investigation conducted by his office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. He also said ICE may have allowed the erasure of critical data in the vehicle involved in striking Parra, who was on foot.
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Parra, 48, was left with multiple breaks and fractures in his body, according to his attorney and an advocate who has been speaking on his behalf. He had surgery on one leg and faces multiple additional operations, said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of FIEL, an immigrant civil rights group.
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Teare said his office and the sheriff’s office determined that the vehicle that struck Parra was a Jeep Cherokee and that it potentially had evidence, including a data crash recorder. He said his office wanted to know whether the vehicle locked in information at the time of the collision that could be downloaded, such as speed, steering and braking. Teare said the way to preserve data from the car would have been to “put it on a flatbed trailer and you take it to forensically download it.”
But he said he believes any data on the recorder related to the incident could have been erased when ICE drove the car away.
He and the sheriff’s investigators told ICE the information needed to be downloaded, but ICE refused, Teare said.
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Teare also said two people from “an entirely different operation” were in the back seat of the ICE vehicle when it struck Parra. Those two people are also in ICE custody, along with Parra. Teare said his office is working to ensure all three remain in the country as material witnesses.
“I’ve taught for years at the Houston Police Department Academy, Harris County Department Academy. I’ve worked with law enforcement for 20 years. There is not a single agency in the United States that would teach that once you put people in custody in your car, you then begin to pursue other people,” he said.
Doing so puts “every single person out there in danger again,” he said.
According to Teare, the ICE vehicle should have activated its emergency equipment, such as its lights and siren, as it jumped a median and crossed into oncoming traffic.
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In previous encounters between ICE and targets of its arrests in vehicle stops, including some who have been killed, such as[ Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-shooting-houston-rcna353407), ICE has alleged the people it tried to arrest[ weaponized their vehicles](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/families-fatally-shot-ice-vehicle-encounters-fear-pattern-rcna588866).