A Harris County grand jury has indicted an officer of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a felony count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, over an October 10 pursuit in Houston in which he struck a man with his unmarked SUV. The charge carries a sentence of 2 to 20 years in prison.
The officer is Mario Alberto Morales, who according to his attorney has worked for ICE for a little over a year. The indictment was announced on Friday, October 30. His lawyer, David Lindenmuth, said Morales would turn himself in at a courthouse on Monday, November 2.
What the footage shows
The man Morales hit is Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, a Mexican construction worker who has lived in Texas for more than 30 years without legal status and has no criminal record. He broke a leg — Harris County district attorney Sean Teare said the vehicle ran over both of them — and is recovering at a rehabilitation facility while in federal custody.
Surveillance video shows Morales's vehicle drive over a median and strike Parra Hernandez as he ran across a parking lot. Presenting the case, Teare played body camera footage in which the vehicle makes sharp steering turns before stopping, after which Morales gets out and turns toward Parra Hernandez on the ground. On the same recording, once another agent arrives, Morales says: "I was coming in, and I hit him with the car."
Teare said Morales "aggressively steered his vehicle into Parra-Hernandez," and drew the wider line himself: "An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill or violate the constitutional rights of anyone." He said prosecutors hold a "significant amount of information" on the officer, and that in his experience law enforcement agencies would not hire someone with Morales's background. He did not elaborate.
ICE rejects the case
ICE called the indictment a "political stunt" and said local officials have no authority to investigate federal officers carrying out their duties. "Allegations that ICE struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are RECKLESS and FALSE," the agency said.
The agency's account is that Parra Hernandez ran in front of the car, and that the target of the operation was a man named Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, reportedly seen getting into a vehicle with him. Mendoza-Cervantes's daughter told the immigrants' rights group FIEL that her father has been dead for nearly a decade.
Morales told sheriff's deputies that he did not brake but did not intend to hit anyone. Lindenmuth called the collision "clearly just an accident" and said local officials had "invented a crime out of thin air."
A jurisdictional fight as much as a criminal one
Behind the charge sits a question the courts have not settled in this round of immigration enforcement: how far a county prosecutor may go in charging a federal agent for conduct the agent says was part of a federal operation. Federal officers can seek to move such cases to federal court and to claim immunity for acts within the scope of their duties, which is the argument ICE's statement sets up. The indictment puts that argument in front of a judge rather than settling it.
Reporting from PBS NewsHour and CBS News.
