Texas DA investigating ICE vehicle hitting man; could lead to aggravated assault charge

HOUSTON — A man who was injured when an ICE officer’s car ran over him has had 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, had leg and hip injuries and a shattered ankle after the officer’s vehicle struck him during a pursuit Saturday, said Cesar Espinosa, a co-founder and the executive director of FIEL, who was speaking on Parra’s behalf. Parra cannot put weight on his leg for six weeks and must wait for swelling to reduce 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 hit “in a violent and brutal fashion.”

ICE has 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,” it said.

It has 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.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for further comment.

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.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office has said it is leading the investigation of what it described Saturday as an “auto-ped” incident, with help from the Harris County 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.