The ICE agent who allegedly ran down an immigrant in Houston on Saturday has been placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated, a senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News.
As NBC News previously reported, a senior DHS official said several ICE agents at the scene were wearing body cameras and that ICE was reviewing video from the scene as part of an internal investigation.
The DHS official said no decision has yet been made about whether to share the footage with the public or with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which is conducting its own investigation into the case.
Harris County Prosecutor Sean Teare told NBC News on Thursday that he interviewed a key witness who was handcuffed in the back of the ICE vehicle when it struck Miguel Parra Hernández. The witness “had a front-row seat to the incident and everything leading up to it,” Teare said. “We obtained a significant amount of relevant detail from him.”
The witness was interviewed at the Port Isabel processing center, about 35 to 40 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in south Texas, according to the prosecutor’s office. The Port Isabel facility is historically known as the last stop before an immigrant is deported from the United States.
Teare said his office is in the process of compiling all the information it has collected or is still in the process of compiling and that “in very short order we will get to the point where we will present this to a grand jury.” He said it could happen as early as next week.
Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of FIEL Houston, identified the witness as José Presa Cañada and also said he was questioned by the prosecutor.
“It’s very disturbing” that Presa is in Port Isabel, Espinosa said Thursday. “We want to know why he is here, why he hasn’t been released yet and why they are trying to deport him so quickly. »
Teare declined to comment on what was said during the Presa interview. Teare also interviewed Parra.
The Oct. 10 auto-pedestrian collision that left Parra hospitalized with multiple injuries and requiring surgeries sparked an investigation that could lead to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to Teare.
The prosecutor’s office said it informed ICE shortly after the incident of its intention to question Presa. In an email, ICE responded that the prosecutor should quickly travel to Port Isabel because the agency planned to deport Presa, according to the prosecutor’s office.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for information about Presa’s detention and whether it plans to deport him.
ICE previously said Parra was not its target for arrest Monday. An agency spokesperson said after the incident that Parra ran into the path of the ICE vehicle.
The other potential witness who was handcuffed in the ICE vehicle that struck Parra is Luis Delfín Martínez, who is being held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, north of Houston, according to advocates and family.
The prosecutor’s office has issued subpoenas for Parra’s medical records, as well as the records of emergency medical personnel who responded when Parra was struck.
Teare, Parra’s lawyer, Kim Bruno, and his defenders have pressured the Trump administration not to deport Parra and the two men in the vehicle and asked the prosecutor and others to protect them.
Earlier this week, Teare said in an interview that his office had been in contact with the consulates of the three men’s home countries and let them know they were willing to help them with their application for visas for key witnesses in the criminal cases, known as U visas.
“We are working with the powers that be in a very important effort to keep them here in this country,” he said then.
Teare told NBC News that it was “pretty obvious” from videos collected by his office, including drone videos, that ICE intentionally struck and ran over Parra, an allegation that ICE called reckless and false.
Security video of the incident obtained by Houston NBC affiliate KPRC shows a white truck facing the opposite direction of traffic on a busy road. Parra and another man get out of the white truck and run, the video shows.
Around the same time, the video shows, another vehicle jumped a yellow median and headed toward Parra. The video then shows the vehicle, unmarked, swerving left towards Chemin de Parra, in front of a truck stopped in a shopping center.
When the parked truck drives away, a man can be seen lying on the sidewalk behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
Teare sought to download data from the ICE vehicle while still at the scene of the collision, but an agent drove the car away. Driving the car may have automatically erased critical data, said Teare, who headed the traffic crimes division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office for several years.
Gn usa
