Cry for ‘justice’ in shoot by ICE agent

New Yorkers denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics on Friday and rallied with the mother of an unarmed tourist who was shot by a federal agent in the face earlier this month in Brooklyn.

Erick Diaz-Cruz, 26, was wounded in a confrontation with ICE agents in Gravesend on

Feb. 6 after they tried to arrest his mother’s companion, Gaspar Avendano-Hernandez, who advocates said was repeatedly tased.

“My family deserves justice,” his mother Carmen Cruz said in Spanish during a Council hearing on ICE enforcement Friday. “Our people deserve justice.”

A lawsuit filed by Diaz-Cruz (inset) said the bullet tore through his left hand, entered his left cheek and became lodged in his neck. Diaz-Cruz, an assistant to the mayor of the Mexican city of Martinez de la Torre in Veracruz State, was visiting his mother with his girlfriend at the time.

Advocates said that ICE barred his family, city officials and lawyers from visiting Diaz-Cruz after emergency surgery at Maimonides Hospital – even though he was in the country legally with a tourist visa and under medical supervision. People were allowed to speak to him only after the Mexican Consul General intervened.

“After the attack, after suffering a crime at the hands of the federal government, federal agents went inside the hospital where they did not let me talk to my son or my partner,” Cruz said in Spanish.

Advocates said the shooting and the intimidation tactics at the hospital are only the latest in escalating measures from ICE agents, who they said hide their identities and impersonate police, making it harder for NYPD to build trust within communities.

Cruz said federal agents impersonated NYPD officers when they arrived at her home on Feb. 6 before the shooting – and said they were looking for the owner of a car.

“This is a federal government that cheats,” she said during the hearing, calling for the state to conduct an investigation into the incident.

“ICE is shooting unarmed tourists in the face and getting away with it,” Councilman Carlos Menchaca (DBrooklyn) said. “Now border patrol units are coming to New York City to join them. We cannot allow this authoritarianism to grow.”

A resolution from Menchaca calls on the feds to prohibit ICE agents from wearing clothing or gear with the word “police” and stop referring to themselves as cops.

ICE said Avendano-Hernandez, who was arrested and accused of being in the U.S. unlawfully, is a twiceremoved immigrant who was convicted in New York City of assault in 2011. Officials also said that he was arrested by the NYPD Feb. 3 for possession of a forged instrument and released from local custody before ICE could lodge an immigration detainer.