José Mejía Hernández, 45, was walking to a bus stop in Arlington, Virginia on the morning of 11 August when two agents exited an unmarked vehicle and gave chase. He recalls being hit by some kind of stun gun. He does not remember what happened next. He woke up hours later in a hospital, where a nurse told him he had suffered a brain bleed. Medical records obtained by the Guardian confirm diagnoses of mild traumatic brain injury and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Photos show severe bruising across his face, two black eyes, and cuts on his hands, chest, and back. DHS confirmed the stop and acknowledged that ICE used "necessary force to gain control of the situation" after Mejía Hernández "attempted [to] flee." The agency did not respond to questions about what kind of force was used, did not address claims he was beaten, and declined to comment on his medical diagnoses or the visible injuries. Notably, DHS's own statement does not accuse Mejía Hernández of any violence or threatening behavior — only of running. The bureaucratic aftermath compounded the physical harm. After several days hospitalized with ICE agents at his bedside, Mejía Hernández was transferred to an ICE office, fitted with an ankle monitor, and given a notice to appear before an immigration judge. When doctors ordered an MRI for his brain injury, the ankle monitor physically prevented the scan. ICE required him to return to their office, wait hours for paperwork, and have a tracking app installed before removing the monitor. The MRI was delayed by several days. DHS disputed one narrow claim — that Mejía Hernández was unconscious after the arrest — stating officers "rendered aide [sic]" and that the individual was "responsive." The agency framed the ankle monitor situation as routine paperwork, not obstruction. But the core questions — what force was used, why head trauma resulted from arresting a man accused only of fleeing, and how he sustained injuries consistent with repeated blows — remain unanswered. The case sits within a pattern. Congressman Don Beyer reported his office had received reports of "several other ICE encounters in northern Virginia in the past 10 days" involving "unjustified violence or apparently warrantless detention," including agents stopping people on the street and "responding with violence when their orders are questioned." He pointed to a separate incident in Falls Church where an ICE agent pointed a gun at a US citizen who was filming — a person ICE described as an "anti-ICE agitator." Arlington's top prosecutor, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, reached out to local police and the state attorney general's office, urging a "thorough investigation" and stating that "no one is above the law — not any individual, not law enforcement, and not federal officials." DHS responded not to her concerns but to Beyer, accusing him of refusing to "protect citizens from illegal alien crime" and choosing to "smear our law enforcement." The structural question here is not whether Mejía Hernández was in the country without authorization — DHS says he was, and he is now in removal proceedings. The question is what level of physical force the federal government considers acceptable to apprehend a non-violent person walking to a bus stop, what accountability mechanisms exist when that force produces a brain bleed, and whether the bureaucratic apparatus that delayed his own medical imaging constitutes a second layer of harm layered onto the first.
