A federal immigration agent who struck and seriously injured a Texas man Oct. 10 after a botched traffic stop was charged Friday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Mario Alberto Morales, 33, deliberately drove his SUV toward Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, causing multiple leg fractures and a hip injury, reporters said at a news conference in Houston.
In announcing the charge against Morales, Harris County Prosecutor Sean Teare questioned the training that ICE’s recently appointed Morales had received — and denounced the agency’s activities and conduct in support of the often violent immigration crackdown during Donald Trump’s second presidency.
His office is also investigating the fatal shooting by ICE in Houston in July of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an immigrant who, like Parra Hernández, was not the target of an enforcement operation.
Friday’s indictment comes a little more than five months after Christian Castro, an ICE officer who fatally shot a Venezuelan man during an operation in Minnesota in January, was charged with assault and false reporting of a crime.
“Their behavior and the fear that is instilled in such a large and dynamic group of people, Harris County residents, is objectively making all of us less safe,” Teare told reporters, citing what he said was a documented decline in reports of domestic violence, aggravated robberies and sexual assaults by victims who feared eviction.
“One of the most insidious things about these tactics and the way ICE conducts itself in our community is the fear that a large percentage of our population currently experiences. An ICE badge does not give you carte blanche to harm, kill, or violate anyone’s constitutional rights.”
A grand jury empaneled to investigate the case involving Morales returned the indictment Friday morning after hearing evidence that Teare said was “as clear as any I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated.”
Morales was driving an unmarked Jeep Cherokee and attempted to stop a van containing two men who jumped out and fled. Surveillance video played during the news conference showed Parra Hernandez, a Mexican construction worker with no criminal record or active deportation orders, walking through a restaurant parking lot when the SUV pursuing him swerved over him and ran him over.
In an audio recording of a 911 call Morales made seeking help from paramedics and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, he is heard telling the dispatcher that Parra Hernandez ran in front of his vehicle and was struck, a claim repeated in an official ICE account of the case released the next day.
In a statement released Friday, an ICE spokesperson said: “Allegations that ICE intentionally struck Miguel Parra Hernández are reckless and false. The men and women of ICE are responsible for upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and ethical conduct.”
The spokesperson said the indictment was “nothing more than a political stunt by Houston’s sanctuary politicians,” using a term intended to describe local officials who fail to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
“Federal agents acting in the line of duty may only be investigated by other federal agencies,” the spokesperson also said. “Local governments do not have the authority to conduct such an investigation. »
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said during the news conference that his investigators later discovered that at the time he struck Parra Hernandez, Morales’ SUV also contained two handcuffed inmates from an earlier, unrelated operation.
“I don’t know of any law enforcement agency that would deem this acceptable,” he said. “On the contrary, it is very dangerous. If another accident could have occurred with them handcuffed and chained inside the vehicle, the situation might have been even worse because they were very restricted in their movements and in the back seat of the vehicle.”
Teare said ICE expelled at least two “material witnesses” in the week after Parra’s attack, over the prosecutor’s objection and without the opportunity to question them. Parra Hernandez, he said, “isn’t even able to leave the rehab center, and they have court dates to try to deport him.”
The prosecutor said he had collected “a significant amount of information” about Morales’ background – and said he was hired by ICE in August 2025 as part of the agency’s aggressive immigration “surge” in a number of US cities.
He declined to give details about previous employers and said he had not received any training records from Morales.
“Whether he has them or not, we don’t know, but I can tell you unequivocally that I’ve reviewed thousands of applications and resumes of law enforcement officers from across the state, and I don’t know of any agency that would have hired this person based on his background,” Teare said.
Lawyers for Parra Hernández, who remains in ICE custody, have said he will need numerous surgeries to recover from his injuries.
The whereabouts of the person ICE said they were chasing when Parra Hernandez was injured is unclear. The agency identified a man named José Mendoza-Cervantes as their target and released an image of someone they believed was him.
The person in the photo, however, was Jose Hector Jimenez, who died in 2017 while being pursued by federal immigration authorities while trying to re-enter the United States, said the Houston-based immigration advocacy group FIEL, which produced a Mexican death certificate provided by his family.
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