ICE agent charged with assault for hitting Mexican man with car to surrender Monday

Federal immigration agent charged with aggravated assault after crushed a Mexican with his car in Houston will surrender Monday, according to his lawyer.

Mario Alberto Morales, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, struck Miguel Parra Hernandez, a 48-year-old construction worker, with his unmarked SUV on October 10, while chasing Parra Hernandez through a parking lot. A grand jury indicted Morales Friday on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Morales plans to go to the courthouse on Monday, David Lindenmuth, his lawyer, told The Associated Press. Lindenmuth previously told the AP that the incident was “clearly just an accident” and that local authorities had “invented a crime out of thin air.”

Parra Hernandez broke his leg and is recovering at a rehabilitation center while in federal custody, Harris County Prosecutor Sean Teare told reporters Friday.

ICE said Parra Hernandez ran in front of Morales’ car.

Previously released surveillance camera video shows Morales’ vehicle crossing a median and striking Parra Hernandez as he flees.

Teare released footage from Morales’ body camera on Friday that showed the officer making sharp turns with his steering wheel. He then stops, gets out of the vehicle and turns to Parra Hernandez, who is lying on the ground screaming.

“I was going in and I hit him with the car,” Morales can be heard saying after another ICE agent arrived.

Parra Hernandez told deputies he fled the traffic stop when Morales began to put on a mask, and Morales “threw the car at him,” according to a Harris County Sheriff’s Office incident report reviewed by the AP. Morales told deputies he did not brake before hitting Parra Hernández, but that he did not hit him intentionally, according to the report.

ICE said after the incident that the target of the operation was a man named José Mendoza-Cervantes, who the agency said was seen getting into a car with Parra Hernández. Mendoza-Cervantes’ daughter told the immigrant rights group FIEL that her father had been dead for nearly a decade.

Morales is one of a small handful of federal agents who have been criminally charged with injuring people during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Christian Castro, ICE agent pleaded not guilty last month for lying to the FBI after fatally shooting a Venezuelan man as immigration agents swept through Minneapolis earlier this year.

Many other ICE shootings, some of which have been fatal, have not resulted in charges against the agents involved.

Morales, 33, has been an ICE agent for a little over a year, according to Lindenmuth.

Teare said Friday that authorities have a “significant amount of information” about Morales and that, in his experience, law enforcement would not hire someone with his background. He did not specify.

Morales was charged with a misdemeanor in 2013 for stealing four DVDs, according to Harris County court records. Those charges were dismissed after he paid a $270 fine and reached a plea deal.

Morales unsuccessfully ran to represent Texas’ 34th Congressional District in this year’s election cycle under the name “Bam Morales,” which Lindenmuth confirmed. Morales served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, then as a corrections officer and law enforcement officer, he wrote in an article on Ballotpedia. investigation. He wrote that his top priorities were veterans’ rights, economic issues and service guided by Christian principles of “compassion, integrity, service and responsibility.” He cited illegal immigration as one of the country’s biggest challenges.

Morales also wrote in the survey that he was supported by an organization called “Make America Godlier Again.”

Morales appeared at a Christian conference in 2024 hosted by televangelist Johnson Suleman. In video At the end of the conference, Morales appears to act as Spanish translator while Suleman serves free food and “extends his loving touch to migrants.”

“I want to pray for immigrants,” Suleman said, as Morales translated the words into Spanish. “I bless you. May the Lord grant your request and open your doors.”

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Mayes-Osterman is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover under-reported issues.