New York Times reporter speaks on Houston ICE report

We've got to have continuing coverage here. Kara and Bela are continuing to follow what's taking place in regards to the ICE incident. We saw it play out on Saturday. And we have two big updates today. DHS confirming that the ICE agent driving the vehicle is on leave. And then you had a very substantive conversation with the New York Times, who was investigating the picture used for the wanted person, allegedly. Allegedly, yes. So first, DHS, they sent us a statement this morning. I reached out to them yesterday. They finally got back to me. And essentially they said that the ICE agent being put on leave, that's standard procedure. It's not minutes of wrongdoing in any way. And essentially they are doing that as the investigation moves forward. Now the second piece of information is in regard to the second man who was in the car at the time. Now we know this happened Saturday. Both men were fleeing law enforcement. They both got out of the car. And ICE's initial account said that the gentleman who was hit ran in front of the vehicle. And so now we have the video that appears to paint a different picture, but we're still working to get some more information on that. Now, the key here is the second person who was in the car. ICE initially identified him as Jose Mendoza Cervantes. Well, a woman named Jamie Jimenez reached out to us and the New York Times and said, this is my father and he's been dead since 2017. And that is a huge piece of information here. Absolutely. And you spoke to the New York Times. The New York Times kind of had that conversation with her. Yes. So Jasmine Ulloa, she's the reporter who wrote the article that we got a lot of information from. She said she spoke to Jamie, and Jamie provided her own birth certificate, the death certificate from Mexico for her father. Jose Jimenez is his given name. Jose Mendoza Cervantes is an alias he had sometimes used. But they were able to put that against some other court records in the Dallas area, and of course, death records in Laredo. And so when she explained some of the process, she went through how she was able to confirm his identity and corroborate some of what Jamie told her. We also did many court record searches, compiled documents showing that the charges that ICE attributed to the man that they were targeting matched those of Mr. Jimenez Mendoza and those were driving under the influence and unlawful possession of a weapon. So now has DHS essentially, cuz that's a huge, I mean, that's huge, right? If this woman is saying that her dad's been dead for 10 years, so has DHS said anything specifically in regards to the picture and the name that they put out? Because many of us believe the second person that hopped out the car was Cervantes. A lot of us believe that initially, I reached out and so did Jasmine with the New York Times. And DHS has not answered either of our questions. And as we were having that conversation, Jasmine and I mentioned that we asked a lot of the same questions. How do we know this was Jimenez? How were you able to identify him compared to someone else who may have been in the car? Is it possible he has been misidentified? Is this person even still alive, according to your records? We went through DPS records ourselves. I looked repeatedly. The problem is the name is very common in the state of Texas. And a lot of the instances where someone may have been in the federal system, they don't have photos. So it's hard to just look for a man with this name born at a certain year who may be between a certain age gap, and they have a name that is unfortunately that common. So it was hard for us to cooperate. It was easier for Jasmine Ulloa and the rest of the team at the New York Times because they spoke with Jamie Jimenez directly. We are looking forward to hearing more information from DHS in regards to that. Karis, thank you so much for that follow up, that's good details.