Mom Wants Justice for Mexican Son Shot by ICE on Vacation Visit to Brooklyn

By Ellen Moynihan and Kerry Burke, The New York Daily News

23 February 20

he mother of a Mexican municipal worker wants the federal immigration agent who shot her son in the face in Brooklyn held accountable for the incident.

“Those people shot him to kill him. It’s a miracle that my son is alive,” Carmen Cruz said of the Feb. 6 incident in which her son, 26-year-old Erick Díaz-Cruz, was wounded in a confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Gravesend.

“My family and I are the victims of a crime committed by [President] Trump’s immigration officers and we need justice," Cruz said.

Díaz-Cruz and his girlfriend were on a two-week vacation visiting his mom on Feb. 6 when agents tried to arrest his mother’s companion, Gaspar Avendaño-Hernández.

Díaz-Cruz — an assistant to the mayor of the Mexican city of Martínez de la Torre in Verzcruz state — filed a lawsuit in federal court this week against the unidentified agent.

The lawsuit says the agent’s bullet tore through Díaz-Cruz’s left hand, entered his left cheek and remains lodged in his neck because surgery to remove it would be too risky. According to the lawsuit, he will require “countless more medical interventions."

Díaz-Cruz is getting the medical care he needs, but has suffered trauma, Cruz said.

An ICE spokeswoman said the shooting is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. The bullet that wounded Díaz-Cruz was the only one fired in the incident, ICE has said.

During the incident, Avendaño-Hernández was arrested, accused of being in the U.S. unlawfully. Cruz said she found out Friday that he was denied asylum.

“We need federal legislators to act now to help free my partner Gaspar, and we need a full investigation of the shooting that almost took my son Erick’s life," Cruz said.

Cruz and activists from Young Progressives of America, Immigration Advocates Network and Sunset Park ICE Watch asked for New York Attorney General Letitia James to investigate the shooting and demanded that New York’s representatives in Congress support a parole application for Avendaño-Hernández.

"We have an enemy right now in the federal government that’s sending people to attack us, to spill blood, and to shoot us, and I think it demands a very strong response,” said Jorge Muniz-Reyes of Sunset Park ICE Watch.

Avendaño-Hernández is a twice-removed immigrant who was convicted in New York City of assault in 2011, ICE says.

Officials also said that Avendaño-Hernández was arrested by the NYPD Feb. 3 for possession of a forged instrument. He was released from local custody before the federal agency could lodge an immigration detainer.

Because there was no detainer, ICE says, its officers were forced to pick him up in the street.

The shooting comes amid a feud between Trump and New York City over its so-called sanctuary policies, which limit the extent of local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials.

ICE claims the city does not honor the vast majority of its immigration detainer requests. Mayor de Blasio has said the city complies with detainer requests for defendants who have been convicted of a violent or serious felony.

In his lawsuit, Díaz-Cruz alleges that at the time of the shooting neither he nor Avendaño-Hernández were armed. He also says he had a valid tourist visa for his Brooklyn visit.

“He is recovering slowly,” Cruz said of her son. “He needs medical treatment and for the moment he can’t return to Mexico.”