'I Hit Him With the Car,' ICE Officer Said. Now He's Indicted in Houston.

Prosecutors say Mario Alberto Morales, 33, steered into a fleeing man. The charge is aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

In body-camera video from a west Houston parking lot, an ICE officer stands over a man who's wailing on the pavement and says, "I was coming in and I hit him with the car."

Prosecutors say that officer is Mario Alberto Morales, 33. Harris County grand jurors voted Friday to indict him for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony, the Harris County District Attorney's Office said, NBC News reported. The indictment alleges he drove into Miguel Parra-Hernandez, who was on foot, during an immigration operation on Oct. 10.

No immigration agent in Texas had been indicted before, according to NBC News. Two other ICE officers face charges in Minnesota, the Texas Tribune reported.

Morales also called 911 for an ambulance while Parra-Hernandez screamed in the background. He told the dispatcher, "he hit my car," according to a recording that District Attorney Sean Teare played at a Friday news conference, CBS News reported. The Texas Tribune reported that Morales told the dispatcher the man was fine and only complaining of pain, and said he planned to put him, handcuffed, in his vehicle. The operator told him not to move him.

Teare said Morales aggressively steered into Parra-Hernandez and ran over both of his legs, CBS News reported. In the body-camera footage, NBC News reported, the steering wheel jerks left, and seconds later comes a wail. Parra-Hernandez lies face down and cries out that he's been run over. Teare said the evidence was as clear as anything he's ever prosecuted or investigated. If Morales is convicted, he faces two to 20 years in prison, Teare said.

ICE tells it differently. Right after the crash the agency said Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle and was struck. On Friday an ICE spokesperson called the indictment "a political stunt" by Houston's sanctuary politicians, NBC News reported. The spokesperson argued that local governments have no power to look into federal officers doing their jobs, and that such cases belong to federal agencies alone.

The agency again denied that the officer hit Parra-Hernandez on purpose. Teare, a Democrat, said it's false that his office can't investigate.

Earlier in October, a senior DHS official told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security had placed an officer on administrative leave over the crash. Teare has said ICE moved the vehicle from the scene before his office could get data from it.

At Friday's news conference, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said two people in handcuffs were already in the back of Morales's SUV before the crash, the Texas Tribune reported. Teare added that they weren't wearing seatbelts. He also said ICE has since deported two detained immigrants who were witnesses in the case.

ICE has said the operation was after a man named Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, not Parra-Hernandez. Mendoza-Cervantes's daughter has said her father died in 2017, NBC News reported. She said so to Kim Bruno, Parra-Hernandez's attorney, and to the Houston immigrant-rights group FIEL.

Parra-Hernandez is 48. His attorney told NBC News that he was 14 when he arrived in the U.S., that he's spent 34 years here and that he has a clean criminal record. An advocate said he'd been doing stucco work when he was hit. DHS says he's in the country without legal permission.

Teare said his office has been in touch with Morales's lawyer but doesn't know whether Morales is still in Houston. Teare also said the same grand jury will decide whether to indict the ICE agent in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, another Houston case, according to the Texas Tribune.

Parra-Hernandez is recovering at a rehab facility, still in ICE custody. Teare said he still faces deportation, even though he's the "victim of a second-degree felony."

Source: NBC News, retrieved October 30, 2026. Other sources: texastribune.org, CBS News.