ICE officer is indicted after striking, injuring immigrant with his vehicle in Houston

A Texas grand jury indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, alleging he drove his vehicle into Miguel Parra Hernandez, who was on foot, earlier this month, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

The indictment of Morales, 33, was handed up by a Harris County grand jury Friday morning.

The indictment is the first of an immigration agent in Texas. ICE enforcement officer Christian Castro was charged in the January shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in Minnesota.

“The evidence that we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said in a news conference Friday.

At the news conference, Teare played body camera video from an officer that showed the officer snapping the steering wheel left and seconds later a wail can immediately be heard.

Parra is on the ground with his face on the pavement and the officer turns him over. “You ran over me,” Parra cries.

The officer, who is standing over Parra who continues wailing in agony, the video shows. The officer tells him “You got hit with the car, bro.” The officer turns him over and tries to pick Parra up from his shoulders, but Parra cries out louder.

The officer is heard saying, “I was coming in and I hit him with the car.” He suggests trying to put Parra in the car.

“An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill, or violate the constitutional rights of anyone,” Teare said.

The Oct. 10 collision left Parra with hip, leg and ankle injuries, including a broken leg, according to his family and representatives. Parra is at a rehab facility under ICE custody, Teare said.

In a statement issued after the collision, ICE said Parra “ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.” The agent was driving an SUV.

But after reviewing video collected by investigators in his office from local businesses and bystanders, Teare accused the agent of deliberately running over Parra. ICE has previously said accusations that its agent intentionally struck Parra were “reckless” and “false.”

In an emailed statement shortly after the indictment was announced, an ICE spokesperson said the indictment “is nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians.”

The spokesperson stated that only federal agencies can investigate “federal officers acting in the course of their duties,” and that local governments don’t have the authority to run such an investigation.

Teare, a Democrat, said at the press conference that it’s “false” that they can’t investigate.

ICE repeated its view that that allegations that the ICE officer struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are “reckless” and “false.”

DHS placed an officer on administrative leave after the collision, a senior DHS official told NBC News earlier this month.

Security video of the incident obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck facing the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway. Parra and another man exit the white truck and run, the video shows.

At about the same time, the video shows, another vehicle jumps a yellow median and heads in Parra’s direction. The video then shows the vehicle, which is not marked, swerving left toward Parra’s path, in front of a truck stopped in a shopping center.

When the parked truck leaves, a man can be seen lying on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle, the video shows.

Teare, who worked several years as a Harris County vehicle crimes division chief, had previously told NBC News that he had sought critical data from the vehicle involved in the collision but ICE moved the car from the scene.

Parra has lived in the U.S. for 34 years, having arrived at age 14, and he has no criminal record, his attorney told NBC News. He had been doing stucco work when he was struck, according to an advocate. DHS said he was in the country without legal permission.

ICE had said it was conducting a targeted enforcement operation to arrest Jose Mendoza-Cervantes and was not targeting Parra or another man who was also in a truck with Mendoza-Cervantes before they fled on foot.

But Mendoza-Cervantes’ daughter told Houston immigrant rights group FIEL of Houston and Parra’s attorney Kim Bruno that her father had been dead since 2017.