Homeland Security agent shoots man during raid
Man hospitalized after federal raid on southwest side
Authorities investigate the scene where a Homeland Security agent shot a suspect during a Wednesday morning raid in the 6100 block of Grapevine Street. The male suspect was transported to a hospital with a single gunshot wound to the lower abdomen.
A federal immigration agent shot and wounded a suspect during a Wednesday morning drug raid in southwest Houston, according to Houston law authorities.
The 6 a.m. shooting landed one man in the hospital with a single gunshot wound to the lower abdomen, Houston police said afterward.
“No citizens were ever put in harm’s way,” said Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Bobby Dobbins, who spoke to reporters at the scene in the 6100 block of Grapevine. “The entire incident occurred inside the house.”
There were no indications the suspect returned fire, and officials wouldn’t confirm whether anyone was arrested in the operation, which one source said netted drugs and multiple guns.
The investigative branch that spearheaded the operation — Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations — has been at the center of a push to dissolve the federal agency and split off on its own.
The gunfire broke out around 6 a.m., after agents burst into a home to serve a warrant. The operation, which was also headed up by the Drug Enforcement Administration, included multiple houses, authorities said.
Just before the raids, Houston police were called in to assist.
When Homeland Security Investigations agents entered one of the homes, the man inside refused to obey their verbal commands, authorities said.
“At that time they felt their life was in danger and they fired, at least once,” Dobbins said.
Federal agents said the suspect was armed but that no one else was in the home. No agents were injured in the operation, and the other raids and arrests went off without a hitch, police said.
Authorities would not identify the wounded suspect, or explain what they looking for in the raids.
HPD will be the lead agency in the shooting investigation, but ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility will review the matter as well, authorities said.
The investigative federal agency behind the shooting is a branch of ICE that doesn’t handle deportation, instead focusing on drug trafficking and other international crime.
Earlier this year, a number of officials with Homeland Security Investigations penned a letter asking to be separated from Enforcement and Removal Operations, the arm of the agency that focuses on more controversial immigration enforcement.
“HSI’s investigations have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities,” the agents wrote in a four-page letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen first reported by the Texas Observer.
News of the HSI letter comes as some politicians have loudly criticized the immigration agency, even touting plans to draft legislation that would abolish ICE.