An ICE agent in Houston ran over a construction worker with an unmarked Jeep, then called 911 and said the man ran in front of him. His own body camera had a different version: "I was coming in and I hit him with the car." A Harris County grand jury indicted him Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The Tape Disagrees With the Agent
Here's what we know, according to reporting from The Guardian and CBS News. On October 10, ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales, 33, was driving an unmarked Jeep Grand Cherokee and tried to stop a pickup truck. Two men jumped out and ran. One of them was Miguel Parra Hernandez, a 48-year-old Mexican construction worker who has lived in Texas for more than 30 years, has no criminal record, and had no deportation order against him.
Surveillance video played at a Friday news conference shows Parra Hernandez running across a restaurant parking lot. The SUV swerves into him. It ran over both of his legs. He suffered multiple leg fractures and a hip injury, and his lawyers say he will need numerous operations to recover.
Then came the paperwork. In a recorded 911 call asking for paramedics, Morales told the dispatcher, "We're following this guy, trying to pull him over, he jumped out of the vehicle, I tried to get around him, and he hit my car." You can hear Parra Hernandez screaming in the background while the agent explains that the man he just drove over is the one who struck him.
I Was Coming In and I Hit Him
The body camera footage, reviewed by NBC News and played for reporters, tells it differently. It shows the officer snapping the steering wheel left. Seconds later, a wail. Parra Hernandez is on the pavement with his face against the asphalt, and the officer turns him over. "You ran over me," Parra Hernandez cries.
The officer's response is the part that will be played at trial. "You got hit with the car, bro." Then, to someone else: "I was coming in and I hit him with the car." He suggests trying to put the man with the shattered legs into the vehicle.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, a Democrat, said Morales "aggressively steered his vehicle into Parra-Hernandez." He called the evidence "as clear as any that I've ever prosecuted or investigated." If convicted, Morales faces two to 20 years in prison.
Two Handcuffed Men in the Back Seat
It gets worse. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told the press conference that his investigators later learned Morales's SUV also contained two handcuffed detainees from an unrelated operation when it struck Parra Hernandez. Two shackled men in the back, and the driver decides to swerve into a pedestrian.
"I know of no law enforcement agency that would deem that to be acceptable," Gonzalez said. "If some other crash could have occurred with them being handcuffed and shackled inside the vehicle it would have been a maybe even worse situation because they were very limited in their movement."
So the agent allegedly drove into a man on foot while carrying prisoners who couldn't brace for impact. That's not a training gap. That's a judgment problem with a badge attached.
The Target Has Been Dead Since 2017
ICE said its agents were pursuing a man named Jose Mendoza-Cervantes and released a photo of the person it said was him. Here's the problem. The man in the photo is Jose Hector Jimenez, who died in 2017 while being pursued by federal immigration authorities as he tried to re-enter the US. The Houston immigration advocacy group FIEL produced a Mexican death certificate provided by his family.
Teare said Mendoza-Cervantes has apparently been dead for nine years. The whereabouts of whoever ICE was actually chasing are unknown.
Let that sink in. The operation that ended with a man's legs crushed was built around a photo of a dead guy. The agency that wants to be trusted with everything from deportation proceedings to the investigation of its own agents could not correctly identify its target, and the wrong guy paid for it.
Witnesses Deported, Victim Still Detained
Teare said ICE deported at least two material witnesses within a week of the incident, over his objection and with no chance for his office to interview them. Maybe that's a coincidence. It sure is a convenient one.
Parra Hernandez, meanwhile, remains in ICE custody at a rehab facility. Teare said he is "not even able to leave the rehab facility, and they are having court dates to try to deport him." The man with the broken legs is being processed for removal. The man who broke them was placed on administrative leave, according to a DHS official who spoke to NBC News.
Teare also said he has reviewed Morales's background and that ICE hired him in August 2025 as part of its aggressive city surge. He declined to give details of prior employers and said he has not received any of Morales's training records. "I'm not familiar with a single agency that would have hired this person based on his past," Teare said.
ICE Calls It a Political Stunt
ICE's response was predictable. A spokesperson said allegations that the agent struck Parra Hernandez intentionally are "reckless and false," called the indictment "nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians," and said only federal agencies can investigate federal officers. Teare called the jurisdiction claim false.
Notice what's missing: any explanation for the body camera audio. "Reckless and false" is a hard thing to say about a tape in which your own agent says he hit the guy with the car.
This is also not the first time. Teare's office is investigating the July fatal shooting by ICE in Houston of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who like Parra Hernandez was not the intended target of an enforcement operation. And in Minnesota, ICE officer Christian Castro was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime after shooting and wounding a Venezuelan man in January. Teare also argued that the fear ICE has instilled is making the county less safe, citing a documented drop in reports of domestic violence, aggravated robberies, and sexual assaults from victims afraid of deportation.
The Dingo Take
Picture a Harris County sheriff's deputy who runs over a man in a parking lot, tells the 911 dispatcher the man ran into him, and then gets caught on his own body camera saying he hit him with the car. Picture that deputy's department calling the charges a political stunt, deporting the witnesses, and keeping the victim locked up while he heals. Every conservative talk show in America would be calling for his head by lunchtime. Nobody would be arguing about jurisdiction.
But put an ICE badge on him and suddenly the story is about who gets to investigate. Not about the man whose legs were crushed. Not about the dead guy in the target photo. Not about the two handcuffed detainees riding along for the crash. The agency's entire defense is that nobody is allowed to look, and its entire record this week is a case for why somebody must.
Teare put it plainly: "An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill, or violate the constitutional rights of anyone." That should not be a bold statement from a prosecutor. It should be boring. The fact that it takes a grand jury, a surveillance video, and a body camera confession to get there tells you everything about what this agency thinks it can get away with. We'll see in court whether it's right.
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