HOUSTON — Videos collected by local investigators make it “pretty obvious” that an ICE officer intentionally ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez 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.
Teare said that in his seven years as a Harris County vehicular crimes division chief, he has reviewed video from a number of other auto-pedestrian collision cases. He said the video his investigators have gathered in Parra’s case “goes above” the video that was posted online and obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston.
“My viewing of it, and many other investigators that have viewed it, as well, it’s pretty obvious that 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,” he said.
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.
Video obtained by KPRC shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. It 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 a shopping center. The parked truck leaves, and a man can be seen on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
An ICE spokesman said over the weekend that officers were pursuing the fleeing men and that “Miguel Parra Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.”
Teare, a Democrat, announced late Monday that his office had launched an independent investigation.
On Tuesday, an ICE spokesperson who was not identified said in a statement that “allegations that ICE struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are RECKLESS and FALSE. The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct.”
ICE said the allegations are “disgusting smears” that are “peddled by the media,” leading to more than a 1,600% increase in assaults and a 3,300% increase in vehicle attacks against its law enforcement officers. It did not offer data behind those numbers.
ICE has said that Parra was not the target of the attempted stop but that he was in the country illegally. Parra’s attorney and family have said he has no criminal record and was on his way to work applying stucco.
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.
ICE did not respond to questions about a data crash recorder, the erasing of any potential data or any refusal to download it.
“Our office began drafting a search warrant that we were in the process of drafting when the ICE agent in question, the one that had been driving, we believed, at the time of the collision, jumped back into the car and drove it away from the scene,” Teare said. “In my 20-year career, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
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.
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News on Tuesday that multiple ICE officers on the scene at the time were wearing body cameras. ICE is reviewing video of the scene as part of an internal investigation, the official said.
Espinosa said Parra told him that 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.
ICE has said it was targeting another man, Jose Mendoza Cervantes, who was in the country illegally and had committed several crimes. Espinoza and Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno said neither Parra nor the man who was with him when ICE stopped their vehicle has any association with Mendoza.
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, ICE has alleged the people it tried to arrest weaponized their vehicles.
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.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has been asking witnesses and people who may have photos or video of the incident to contact it. Teare said that there is a secure portal that goes directly to the district attorney’s office and that no one is asked about citizenship or immigration status.
“All we are interested in is getting the truth, and any shred of cellphone footage, anyone that saw something and really can point us in the right direction, it would be wonderful,” he said.