A Virginia man says he can’t remember his ICE encounter, and was hospitalized with a brain bleed, but DHS says agents used ‘necessary force’
"He showed up all beaten up."
José Mejía Hernández says he cannot remember most of what happened during his encounter with ICE agents. According to The Nerd Stash, medical records from his attorney show he was hospitalized for three days with a traumatic brain injury and a brain bleed. The records, however, don’t establish exactly how those injuries occurred.
Mejía remembers being chased and struck with a Taser while walking to work in Arlington, Virginia. The encounter happened on August 11. He says his memory goes blank from that point on. DHS disputes key parts of his account. The agency maintains that Mejía remained responsive throughout the encounter, and that agents used “necessary force” after he tried to evade arrest.
DHS also shared details about Mejía’s immigration and criminal history alongside its account of the arrest. The agency says he entered the US illegally in 2006, then accepted a voluntary return to Mexico. He reentered illegally in 2008, according to DHS. He was also convicted of public intoxication in Fairfax County in 2020.
The agency’s response included his record, not just his injuries
A video shared online shows Mejía with visible bruising, swelling, black eyes, and cuts, along with stitches on his lip. A second man in the video, who appears to know Mejía, says the lip alone required seven stitches. “He showed up all beaten up,” the man says, questioning why Mejía was hurt that badly after he was reportedly already down.
Mejía also ran into a separate obstacle after the hospital stay. His attorney says doctors ordered an MRI, but the ankle monitor ICE had fitted him with blocked the scan. DHS disputes that this actually delayed anything, saying a procedure already exists to temporarily swap an ankle monitor for phone-based tracking during medical procedures. Immigration authorities ultimately removed the monitor on August 18 so the testing could go forward.
Arlington County’s top prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, has called for an immediate investigation into the encounter. She says she has reached out to Arlington County police and Virginia’s Attorney General’s office for support. Rep. Don Beyer, whose district covers Arlington, said his office has received other reports of ICE encounters involving alleged violence or warrantless detention across Northern Virginia, and he isn’t the only lawmaker calling for accountability this year.
Cases like this one raise a harder legal question than most people realize: suing a federal immigration officer directly is far more difficult than suing a local police officer. The 2022 Supreme Court decision in Egbert v. Boule held that constitutional excessive-force claims generally can’t proceed against federal immigration agents through a Bivens lawsuit, the main tool that previously let individuals sue federal officers personally.
Legal experts say the more realistic path now is the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows a lawsuit against the US government itself, rather than the individual agent, for injuries like assault or battery. That claim has to be filed with the relevant agency within two years of the incident, and it targets the government’s liability rather than the officer’s.
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