Federal prosecutors have charged a man in connection with a van striking an immigration officer this week while agents in New Jersey sought to make a traffic stop.
The suspect, Eduardo Cruz Garcia, had refused to roll down his window when he was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Monday morning and then drove away, striking an ICE agent standing next to the van, according to a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday in Federal District Court in New Jersey.
The agent was injured when he was briefly “wedged” between the van and an ICE vehicle, the complaint said. The court documents included images of the agent’s scraped shin and bruised thigh.
The Department of Homeland Security said that the agent had fired his weapon.
Mr. Cruz Garcia, 39, was struck in the back of his right arm, according to Benjamin West, his lawyer. Mr. West said that federal prosecutors had told him the agent fired three shots.
Mr. Cruz Garcia was arrested a day later, and charged with assaulting and injuring a federal officer. Federal officials said he was from Mexico and in the United States illegally.
Robert Frazer, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, said that Mr. Cruz Garcia had “weaponized his vehicle” against the federal agent.
“Law enforcement must be able to carry out their duties without fear of obstruction or even worse, assault,” Mr. Frazer said in a statement on Wednesday.
The incident initially led to confusion about the driver’s identity.
While Mr. Cruz García was at large, the Homeland Security Department released a statement saying that the agents had been “conducting a targeted vehicle stop” in order to arrest a different person, a Peruvian immigrant named Friedrich Castillo Ormeño.
But Mr. Castillo Ormeño, 30, was not in the United States: He had self-deported to Peru with his girlfriend and 1-year-old daughter in March, he told The New York Times in an interview.
“My aunt who lives in the United States told me my name was all over the news in connection with an attempted homicide in New Jersey, and I told her, like, how? I’ve been here for three months now,” he said in a phone interview from Peru, in Spanish. “They were saying I had run over the ICE agent.”
Mr. Castillo Ormeño said he had entered the United States illegally in July 2022 along with his girlfriend, filed an asylum application and moved to New Jersey, where he found a job in a restaurant. He and his girlfriend had a baby. The family had decided to fly back to Peru on March 2, after an immigration judge ordered him to leave the country.
He said that they had received $5,200 from the Homeland Security Department about a month after returning to Peru, as a reward for self-deportation. Mr. Castillo Ormeño, who also spoke to Noticias Telemundo, shared pictures of his plane ticket and of the family on the flight to Lima, the capital of Peru, with The Times.
On Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department said that federal agents had shown up at Mr. Castillo Ormeño’s last known address in Manahawkin, a community in Ocean County along the Jersey Shore, where they saw someone “who looked similar to the target get into a van that departed the residence.”
Federal officials did not reply to questions as to why agents were seeking to arrest someone whom the Homeland Security Department had given a monetary award for voluntarily leaving the United States.
Mr. Castillo Ormeño said he was familiar with the driver of the van, Mr. Cruz Garcia, and that he was a cousin of his former housemate in New Jersey.
Surveillance footage from a restaurant reviewed by The Times shows that the agents had stopped the van near a busy intersection, not far from where Mr. Castillo Ormeño had lived.
The criminal complaint said that agents wearing vests identifying them as ICE agents surrounded the van and attempted to speak to Mr. Cruz Garcia and another person in the van’s passenger seat. The agents told them to lower their windows, but the men did not comply, the complaint said.
As the van rolled forward, video footage shows it appearing to swipe an ICE agent standing by the driver’s side door. The complaint included still images from body camera footage that show the side of the white van appearing to make contact with the agent.
The Homeland Security Department said in a statement that the driver’s actions had resulted “in the officer discharging his weapon.” The gunfire appeared to shatter the van’s rear window as it drove away, according to local police scanner traffic reviewed by The Times.
Experts said that firing at a moving vehicle is a risky form of lethal force that can lead to stray gunfire or cause vehicles to lose control, threatening bystanders.
Marc E. Brown, a use-of-force expert and former instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, said that shooting and potentially killing a driver could leave “2,000 pounds of metal, basically uncontrolled.”
“I’ve never seen an agency train to shoot at a moving vehicle,” he said. “I’m not saying it isn’t out there, but it’s not something general for most officers in basic marksmanship.”
A Homeland Security Department memo from 2023 on the agency’s use-of-force policies generally prohibits officers firing at a moving vehicle solely to disable the vehicle or “to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.”
They are allowed to use deadly force if the officer “has a reasonable belief” that the target “poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” to the officer or another person, according to the memo.
The agency’s policies and the training of officers came under scrutiny this year after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, which prompted questions about whether an ICE officer had been in danger as Ms. Good drove her vehicle forward.
Mitra Taj contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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