The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a collision that happened during a federal immigration enforcement operation in the Houston area on Saturday morning, in which a vehicle driven by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent struck a 48-year-old man. The man was taken to a hospital with what appeared to be a broken leg. No one has been charged in connection with the collision, and the sheriff’s investigation is open.
The Two Accounts Do Not Match
The sheriff’s office and ICE have described the same moment differently, and that difference has not been resolved.
Major McConnell of the sheriff’s special investigation bureau told a press conference that deputies were called to the scene at about 7:20 a.m., that ICE agents were pursuing a wanted suspect who left his vehicle and fled on foot, and that an ICE agent struck a passenger from that vehicle with a vehicle while trying to detain him. CBS News reported those remarks. ICE, in its own account to CBS News, said the man ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck, and said his injuries are believed to be non life threatening.
ICE identified the man who was struck as Miguel Parra-Hernandez and said he is a Mexican national who is in the country illegally. The sheriff’s office said he is in ICE custody at the hospital. ICE said the operation was a targeted action to arrest a different man, Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who it also described as a Mexican national in the country illegally and who it said escaped and remains at large. ICE made assertions about that man’s criminal and immigration history that it did not support with any record of conviction, and this paper is not repeating them as fact.
Nobody has been charged over the collision itself. The sheriff’s office has not announced findings and has not said when it expects to finish.
What the County Judge Has Asked For
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo issued a statement on Sunday saying she is glad the sheriff’s office is investigating and calling on ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the other agencies involved to hand over all evidence, body camera video and audio recordings to Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and District Attorney Sean Teare. She asked for what she called a full and complete investigation by local authorities, said she hopes the injured man receives medical care and access to his family and a lawyer, and accused ICE of a pattern of delaying and obscuring information in cases like this. The federal agencies she named had not responded in the reporting available at the time of writing.
Why This Is Local News Here
The collision did not happen in the Lake Houston area. Accounts of where in the Houston area it took place differ, and this paper is not putting a neighborhood on it until that is settled. The reason it runs here is that the agencies now handling it are county agencies. Kingwood, Humble, Atascocita, Huffman, Summerwood and Fall Creek are all in Harris County, so the sheriff’s office investigating this case is the same office that answers calls here, and the district attorney being asked for a review is the same office that prosecutes cases from here. This paper reported in October on more than 100 recorded contacts between the Houston Police Department and ICE from April through June.
Sources
Read the accounts from the sheriff’s office and ICE at CBS News and the county judge’s statement at The Katy News.
