Texas prosecutors are considering criminal charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who struck and injured a Mexican construction worker with a vehicle in Houston over the weekend, officials said.
The worker, Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, an undocumented immigrant, was driving to his job on Saturday morning when federal immigration authorities tried to pull him over in unmarked vehicles, according to Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL, an immigrant rights group assisting Mr. Parra Hernandez’s family.
When Mr. Parra Hernandez stopped the car, he and a passenger tried to flee. ICE said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Parra Hernandez had run in front of one of the agency’s vehicles and was struck. But surveillance footage from a nearby business captured Mr. Parra Hernandez and another man running away as an ICE vehicle veered around the corner and appeared to hit Mr. Parra Hernandez from behind.
He remained hospitalized on Tuesday and will have to undergo multiple surgeries, Mr. Espinosa said. One of his legs was broken, Mr. Espinosa added, and he suffered injuries to his hips and an ankle.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Sean Teare, the district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston, said investigators from his office were looking into the incident as a possible aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He said investigators also believed that the vehicle that struck Mr. Parra Hernandez was carrying people detained from an earlier incident and that the driver should not have been pursuing the construction worker.
Mr. Teare said that federal agents removed the ICE vehicle from the scene contrary to standard investigation protocol and over the objections of local investigators.
“That is just not the way that law enforcement behaves,” Mr. Teare said in an interview. “Every step of the way, the behavior of these agents, and of ICE as a whole, on our streets is certainly not best practice. It is making every person in our community less safe.”
ICE has faced scrutiny from state and local officials over traffic stops, which have been central to the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration arrests this summer and have at times turned deadly.
Local officials and immigrant rights groups in Houston said residents were still shaken over the July killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and owner of a construction business who had also been on his way to work when he was followed by unmarked ICE vehicles.
In both cases, ICE said its officers were searching for a different person. In its statement on Saturday, ICE said that agents were trying to arrest Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, a Mexican immigrant with a deportation order and prior arrests for driving under the influence and the unlawful possession of a firearm.
ICE said that agents spotted him climbing into Mr. Parra Hernandez’s vehicle before they tried to stop the vehicle. Mr. Mendoza-Cervantes has not been found, the agency said.
Kim Bruno, Mr. Parra Hernandez’s lawyer, and Mr. Espinosa said that Mr. Parra Hernandez and other witnesses disputed that account, arguing that Mr. Mendoza-Cervantes was not in the vehicle and that Mr. Parra Hernandez did not know him.
Investigators with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office are now contacting residents and nearby businesses for additional witness testimony and surveillance footage.
Rodolfo Parra, 34, Mr. Parra Hernandez’s brother, said his family wanted justice for Mr. Parra Hernandez. The family believed he was dead until a friend helped find him at a hospital, the brother said.
Mr. Parra Hernandez, a native of the Mexican state of Puebla, has lived in Houston since he first made his way to the United States as a teenager in the early 1990s, his brother said. He had not been stopped by immigration authorities before and had no criminal record, his relatives and immigration lawyer said.
Mr. Parra, the brother, said he and his family had watched the news reports about Mr. Salgado Araujo with sadness. “We never thought we would be in a similar situation,” he said. “We don’t wish this on anyone.”
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