The ICE officer accused of running over an immigrant in Houston on Saturday has been put on administrative leave while the incident is investigated, a senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News.
As NBC News has reported, a senior DHS official said that multiple ICE officers on the scene at the time were wearing body cameras and that ICE is reviewing video of the scene as part of an internal investigation.
The DHS official said no decision has been made about sharing the video with the public or with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which is conducting its own investigation.
District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News on Thursday that he has interviewed a key witness who was handcuffed in the back of the ICE vehicle when it hit Miguel Parra Hernández. The witness “had a front-row seat to the incident and everything that led up to it,” Teare said. “We did get a significant amount of relevant details 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 district attorney’s office. The Port Isabel facility is historically known as the last stop before an immigrant is removed from the U.S.
Teare said his office is compiling all information it has gathered or is still gathering, and “in very short order we’re going to come to a point where we present this to a grand jury.” He said that could happen as soon as next week.
Teare and Cesar Espinosa, co-founder and executive director of FIEL Houston, an immigrant civil rights group, identified the witness as José Presa Cañada.
“It’s very troubling” that Presa is in Port Isabel, Espinosa said Thursday. “We want to know why he’s there and why he hasn’t been released yet and why they are trying to deport him so expeditiously.”
Teare declined to comment on what was said during the interview with Presa. Teare also has interviewed Parra.
The auto-pedestrian collision Saturday, which left Parra hospitalized with multiple injuries and needing surgery, triggered the investigation, which could result in charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to Teare.
The district attorney’s office said it notified ICE soon after the incident that it wanted to interview Presa. In an email, ICE responded that Teare should get to Port Isabel fast because the agency planned to deport Presa, according to the district attorney’s office.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for information about its detention of Presa and whether it plans to deport him.
ICE has said Parra was not its arrest target on Monday. An agency spokesperson said Parra ran into the ICE vehicle’s path.
The other potential witness who was handcuffed in the ICE vehicle that hit Parra is Luis Delfín Martínez, who is being held in the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, north of Houston, according to advocates and relatives.
The district attorney’s office has issued subpoenas for Parra’s medical records, as well as for records of emergency medical personnel who responded when Parra was struck.
Teare, Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno and advocates have been pressing the Trump administration not to deport Parra and the two men in the vehicle and have asked the district attorney and others to protect them.
Teare said in an interview this week that his office had been in touch with consulates for the countries of origin of all three men to let them know it was ready to assist with their applications for visas for witnesses key to criminal cases, known as U visas.
“We’re working with the powers that be in a really significant effort to keep them here in this country,” he said then.
Teare told NBC News that it’s “pretty obvious” from videos his office has collected, including drone video, that ICE intentionally hit and ran over Parra, an allegation ICE has said is reckless and false.
Security video of the incident obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck facing the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. Parra and another man exit the white truck and run, the video shows.
At about the same time, the video shows, another vehicle jumps a yellow median and heads in Parra’s direction. The video then shows the vehicle, which is not marked, swerving left toward Parra’s path, in front of a truck stopped in a shopping center.
When the parked truck leaves, a man can be seen lying on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.
Teare sought to download data from the ICE vehicle while it was still at the scene, but an agent drove the car away. Driving the car may have automatically erased critical data, said Teare, who led the district attorney’s office’s vehicular crimes division for several years.