A Virginia man who was hospitalized after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained him in August plans to pursue a lawsuit against the agency, claiming that officers rammed him with a car and used a Taser on him during the arrest.
Jose Mejia Hernandez, 45, said was on his way to work in Northern Virginia on Aug. 11 when unmarked vehicles carrying immigration agents appeared in front of him. Mejia Hernandez tried to run from the men, but he felt the shock of a Taser and lost consciousness, he later recounted in social media videos.
On Tuesday, lawyers for Mejia Hernandez filed a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the first step in suing the federal government for damages. The federal government has six months to respond, after which a plaintiff can take the case to court.
According to the filing, witnesses reported seeing Mejia Hernandez fleeing on foot near Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia, when he was “struck by a vehicle operated by one of the federal officers.”
“Video recorded by an eyewitness shortly after the encounter shows Mr. Mejia Hernandez on the ground beside a government vehicle with his face covered in blood,” Denisse Gastélum, a lawyer for Mejia Hernandez, wrote in the filing. “He had sustained blunt-force trauma to his head and upper torso.”
The Department of Homeland Security has denied the assault allegations, saying that its officers used necessary force to detain Mejia Hernandez after he tried to evade arrest related to being in the country without authorization.
But lawyers for Mejia Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, wrote in the filing that he did not have a final order of removal and was not subject to an administrative warrant. The administration has not identified “any individualized basis for approaching him,” the filing states.
According to his attorneys, Mejia Hernandez said he remembers waking up in a hospital bed, his face covered in bruises and cuts. He was hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital for three days with a traumatic brain injury and a brain bleed, according to medical records his attorney shared with The Washington Post.
ICE officers released Mejia Hernandez upon his discharge from the hospital. Soon after, images and videos of him recounting his arrest began circulating across social media, prompting outrage among local activists and lawmakers.
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D), the commonwealth’s attorney for Arlington County, called the allegations “deeply disturbing” and urged county police to conduct a full investigation of what happened to Mejia Hernandez.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in a statement at the time that it was “essential to establish the facts in this case, and, if this is another instance of unjustified violence by ICE agents, to hold them accountable.”
On Aug. 28, Mejia Hernandez filed a complaint with Arlington police, which opened an investigation the following week. Mejia Hernandez’s attorneys said the offenses presented for investigation include malicious wounding, reckless driving and assault and battery.
A spokesperson for Dehghani-Tafti said Monday that the investigation is still active.
Originally from Mexico, Mejia Hernandez entered the United States illegally in 2006. According to DHS, he was deported the same year and returned illegally to the U.S. in 2008. In 2020, he was convicted on a charge of public intoxication, the agency said.
Mejia Hernandez’s arrest came a day after an ICE officer was recorded pointing his firearm at Carolina Molina, a U.S. citizen, in Arlington. The back-to-back incidents renewed scrutiny of immigration actions in Northern Virginia.
“This is the environment of fear the Trump Administration has created with intention and purpose, driven by demands for deportation quotas and content for sick, twisted videos,” Beyer said in a Sept. 25 statement demanding answers from the administration on both cases. “The American people have had enough of this authoritarian lawlessness.”
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