In the latest attempted murder by the US immigration Gestapo, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent ran over 48-year-old Miguel Parra-Hernandez with an unmarked SUV in west Harris County, Texas on Saturday morning. Parra-Hernandez, who was not the target of the ICE operation, was hospitalized and is now in ICE custody awaiting surgery. Police initially reported he suffered one broken leg, but his family has said that both his legs were broken.
Surveillance footage shows two men leaving a white pickup truck near Clay Road and Highway 6. Parra-Hernandez is seen running through a shopping center parking lot. An unmarked SUV turns into the lot, veers left through empty parking spaces and runs him over. In the language of the Department Homeland Security, the government goon “weaponized” his vehicle.
Longer footage shows an ICE agent searching the injured man’s pockets as he lies on the ground. No medical assistance by the agents is visible in that footage. Cesar Espinosa, executive director of the immigrant rights organization FIEL Houston, alleged that agents waited about 10 minutes before calling for emergency assistance.
Family members and supporters gathered Sunday to demand Parra-Hernandez’s release. According to his family, he has lived in the Houston area for 34 years and has no criminal record. After running him over, the federal government continues to hold him prisoner in his hospital bed.
The Texas vehicular assault followed another explosion of ICE violence early Friday morning in Fresno, California. According to Fresno police, 32-year-old David Gonzalez, an off-duty ICE agent from Texas, assaulted a 72-year-old father and his adult daughter after she found the drunk agent asleep on their front lawn.
The woman alerted her father, who went outside to tell Gonzalez to leave. Police said Gonzalez appeared intoxicated when awakened and attacked the elderly man. When the daughter intervened to protect her father, Gonzalez attacked her as well. Both father and daughter suffered visible injuries. Fearing for their safety, the father fired a single shot, striking Gonzalez.
Gonzalez was hospitalized and taken into custody on suspicion of felony assault. Police said the father legally possessed the firearm and would not face criminal charges. The daughter’s partner, an off-duty police officer, handcuffed Gonzalez following the shooting.
As the immigration police continued to trample on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on the Sunday talk shows to justify the ICE shooting of 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in New York City. On Thursday, October 8, an ICE agent, who has yet to be identified, fired seven rounds into Belgal’s SUV in the Marble Hill neighborhood, shooting him in the neck while his five-year-old son sat in the back seat. The agents wore masks, and at least one wore a yellow construction vest in an attempt to conceal his identity.
At a press conference on Friday, Mullin blamed sanctuary policies for criminal activity, attacked Democrats and denounced the public attention being given to Belgal’s injuries and ICE’s criminality.
Mullin threatened, “If sanctuary politicians refuse to take care of their own streets, President Trump has made it very clear, we will.”
On Sunday, Mullin rehashed his fascistic defense on CBS’s Face the Nation and CNN’s State of the Union. On CBS, he accused Belgal of being “absolutely selfish enough to put his child in danger.” On CNN, he similarly declared, “He was a selfish individual.”
In New York, the response to the shooting has exposed the role of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). While Mamdani, a DSA member, publicly denounced ICE, the New York Police Department (NYPD) assaulted anti-ICE protesters and cleared the way for the federal agents to leave.
Among those assaulted was Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA member and Democratic congressional candidate endorsed by Mamdani, who was shoved to the ground by an NYPD officer. “The NYPD spent more time protecting a militia that just shot someone than protecting New Yorkers,” she declared, demanding the resignation of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the disbandment of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG).
Mamdani campaigned on a promise to disband the SRG, which is notorious for its brutality against protesters. More than 10 months after his inauguration, the SRG remains operational. He also retained Tisch, a billionaire heiress and principal architect of the NYPD’s surveillance apparatus.
In an October 9 statement, the New York City DSA demanded that Tisch end “NYPD complicity with ICE” or be fired. The following day, the DSA’s National Political Committee and Abolition Commission demanded that Mamdani fire Tisch and disband the SRG and the NYPD Community Response Team.
The DSA Democrat’s administration unequivocally rejected these demands. A mayoral spokesperson stated: “Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner and there are no plans to change that.”
The DSA thus finds itself protesting the conduct of a police department overseen by its own most prominent elected official. Tisch does not operate independently of the mayor. She serves at his pleasure and police under her command continue to protect ICE goons and assault protesters.
Replacing the commissioner would not change the class character of the NYPD. It is an instrument of capitalist rule, tasked with defending private property and suppressing opposition to the existing social order.
Mamdani’s conduct is consistent with his broader accommodation to Trump. On September 21, he welcomed the president to Gracie Mansion for their third meeting in ten months. After an hour of closed-door talks, Mamdani presented their discussions as a means of improving New Yorkers’ lives and advancing his “affordability agenda.” The fascist president overseeing mass deportations and the drive to dictatorship was presented as a partner with whom the mayor could do business.
Workers speaking to the World Socialist Web Site drew different conclusions. An immigrant worker from Ecuador said of Belgal’s shooting: “Yes, this is not the America that most of us came to live in, came to pursue our dreams. I feel like we are going backwards. We are living what we ran from.”
Of Mamdani, the worker said: “He is in a position that he can make the difference and he’s never done it, none of them have. Not the mayor, not the police, not the governor, none of them. They just have words.”
The worker concluded: “You cannot be a socialist and be a partner with Donald Trump. No, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work like that.”
The defense of immigrant workers and democratic rights requires an independent political movement of the working class against Trump’s dictatorship agenda and the Democratic Party’s collaboration. Workers must demand the release of Parra-Hernandez, Belgal and all those imprisoned in the mass deportation operation, the abolition of ICE and accountability for the agents responsible for these attacks.