A federal immigration officer charged with aggravated assault after he ran over a Mexican man with his car in Houston will turn himself in on Monday, according to his attorney.
Mario Alberto Morales, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, struck Miguel Parra Hernandez, a 48-year-old construction worker, with his unmarked SUV on Oct. 10, as he chased Parra Hernandez through a parking lot. A grand jury indicted Morales on Friday on a felony
charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Morales is planning to turn himself in at a courthouse sometime on Monday, David Lindenmuth, his attorney, told The Associated Press. Lindenmuth previously told the AP that the incident was “clearly just an accident” and that local officials had “invented a crime out of thin air.”
Parra Hernandez broke his leg and is recovering at a rehabilitation facility while in federal custody, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told reporters on Friday.
ICE has said Parra Hernandez ran in front of Morales’ car.
Previously released surveillance camera video shows Morales’ vehicle drive over a median and strike Parra Hernandez as he runs away.
Teare played footage from Morales’ body camera on Friday that showed the agent making sharp turns with his steering wheel. He then stops and exits the vehicle and turns toward Parra Hernandez, who is lying on the ground, screaming.
“I was coming in, and I hit him with the car,” Morales can be heard saying after another ICE agent arrives.
Parra Hernandez told deputies that he fled the traffic stop when Morales started pulling 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 that he did not brake before he hit Parra Hernandez, but that he did not intentionally strike him, according to the report.
ICE said after the incident that the target of the operation was a man named Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who the agency said was seen getting into a car with Parra Hernandez. Mendoza-Cervantes’ daughter told the immigrants' rights group FIEL that her father has been dead for nearly a decade.
Morales is among a small handful of federal agents who have been criminally charged for wounding people during the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown. ICE agent Christian Castro pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he lied to the FBI after he shot and wounded a Venezuelan man as immigration agents swept Minneapolis earlier this year.
Many other ICE shootings, including some that were fatal, have not ended in charges for the agents involved.
Morales, 34, has served as an ICE agent for a little over a year, according to Lindenmuth.
Teare said on Friday that authorities have a “significant amount of information” on Morales, and that, in his experience, law enforcement agencies would not hire someone with his background. He did not elaborate.
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 struck 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 and later as a corrections officer and law enforcement officer, he wrote in a Ballotpedia candidate survey. He wrote that his top priorities were veterans' rights, economic issues and service guided by the Christian principles of “compassion, integrity, service, and accountability.” He listed illegal immigration as one of the country's greatest challenges.
Morales also wrote in the survey that he was endorsed by an organization called “Make America Godlier Again."
Morales appeared at a 2024 Christian conference held by televangelist Johnson Suleman. In video of the conference, Morales appears to act as a Spanish translator as Suleman serves free food and “extends his touch of love to migrants."
“I want to pray for the immigrants,” Suleman said, as Morales translated those 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 report on undercovered issues.
