Here is ICE's account of a Saturday afternoon in Houston: a man "ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck." Here is what the Harris County District Attorney says the video shows: an unmarked vehicle driving against traffic, jumping a median, and swerving toward a man on foot. One of those accounts is going to need a lot of help.
A Prosecutor Who Has Seen This Movie Before
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News that video gathered by local investigators makes it "pretty obvious" an ICE officer intentionally ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez during an immigration stop on Saturday. His legal conclusion was blunt: "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."
Teare is not a guy who wandered into vehicular crime last week. He spent seven years as chief of the Harris County vehicular crimes division, which means he has watched a lot of footage of cars hitting people. He says the video his investigators collected "goes above" the clip already posted online and obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC.
He is also a Democrat, a fact ICE will surely wave around. But a partisan label does not make a median any lower.
What the Footage Actually Shows
The video obtained by KPRC shows a white truck headed in the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. A vehicle jumps a yellow median and heads toward the path where Parra is running. The unmarked vehicle then appears to swerve left, into Parra's path, in front of a truck stopped in a shopping center.
The parked truck pulls away. A man is visible on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle.
Read that sequence again. Jumped a median. Wrong way on a busy road. Swerved toward the guy. Now go back to the phrase "ran in front of an ICE vehicle." In ICE's telling, Parra is the one who drove into the car.
The Man Under the Wheels
Parra, 48, was left with multiple breaks and fractures, according to his attorney and an advocate speaking on his behalf. He has had surgery on one leg and faces multiple additional operations, said Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of the immigrant civil rights group FIEL.
ICE has said Parra was not even the target of the attempted stop, though it says he is in the country illegally. Read that carefully. By ICE's own account, he was a bystander to the operation who happened to be running. Whatever his immigration status, he was not the person the agents came for, and he now has a body full of broken bones.
No one in this story has been accused of anything that justifies being hit by a vehicle.
The Evidence Problem
Teare says the federal government is not cooperating with the investigation run by his office and the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Worse, he said ICE may have allowed the erasure of critical data in the vehicle that struck Parra.
That data would presumably show speed, braking, and steering inputs in the moments before impact. In other words, it is exactly the evidence that would settle whether the driver tried to stop or tried to hit a man. If it is gone, someone should be asked very pointedly why.
If you are confident your officer did nothing wrong, you hand over the vehicle and let the numbers clear him. You do not stonewall local investigators and let the black box get wiped.
ICE Responds With Capital Letters and No Numbers
An unnamed ICE spokesperson said allegations that the agency struck Parra intentionally are "RECKLESS and FALSE," and that its officers are held to "the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct." The statement called the allegations "disgusting smears" that are "peddled by the media."
Then came the stats. ICE claimed this kind of coverage has led to more than a 1,600% increase in assaults and a 3,300% increase in vehicle attacks against its officers. It offered no data behind those figures. None.
So the rebuttal to a district attorney's reading of the video is a pair of enormous percentages with no source, delivered in the all-caps register of a guy yelling at a parking meter. Sure.
What Happens Next
Teare announced late Monday that his office had launched an independent investigation, and he has said the conduct could lead to assault charges. Whether a Texas prosecutor can actually put a federal immigration officer in front of a state jury is a fight that will involve federal supremacy arguments and every lawyer the government can muster.
But the first step is evidence, and the evidence is the part the feds are apparently making difficult. The video exists. The injuries exist. The vehicle data may not.
The Dingo Take
You are being asked to believe that a 48-year-old man, who by ICE's own admission was not even the target of the stop, chose to sprint in front of an unmarked SUV that had just jumped a median and was driving the wrong way on a busy road. You are being asked to believe that this is also why he now needs multiple surgeries. And you are being asked to accept all of it on the word of an agency that will not name its spokesperson, will not share its numbers, and may have let the vehicle's data disappear.
No. Look at the footage. Look at the median. Look at what Teare, a man who has reviewed these collisions for seven years, says he sees. When the government's best defense is a screaming press statement full of made-up-sounding percentages, the statement is the confession.
The question now is whether anyone with a badge and a subpoena can get to the truth before the evidence quietly vanishes. If a state prosecutor cannot even examine the vehicle that ran a man over in his own county, then "the highest standards of professionalism" is just a phrase on a press release. Houston deserves an answer. So does Miguel Parra Hernandez, who is lying in a hospital bed waiting for his next operation.
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