ICE agent Morales indicted for SUV collision with man in Houston

"An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill, or violate the constitutional rights of anyone," Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said at a news conference after a grand jury indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales. The indictment, and the body-camera audio Teare played that day, are the subject of a YouTube video Lamont Tyson posted, titled "ICE Agent INDICTED After Running Over Man in Texas! #ICE #Houston #LamontTyson."

Tyson’s channel description states that an ICE agent was indicted on a felony assault charge after running over a man with an SUV during an immigration enforcement operation in Texas, that the charges stem from an Oct. 10 incident in Houston involving 48-year-old Miguel Parra-Hernandez, and that Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare says the footage supports an intentional-assault allegation. The description attributes original surveillance and investigative footage to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and cites news coverage from CBS News, the Associated Press, Reuters and The Texas Tribune.

A Harris County grand jury returned the indictment against Morales, 33, on Oct. 30, 2026, on a second-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, NBC News and the Houston Chronicle reported. The penalty range is two to 20 years. Teare said the charge is the first time an immigration agent has been indicted in Texas. “The evidence that we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated,” Teare said at the news conference, according to NBC News. The collision took place around 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 10 in a parking lot at a strip mall at Highway 6 and Clay Road in northwest Houston. Morales was driving a Jeep Cherokee SUV. Parra Hernandez, a Mexican national who had lived in the United States 34 years since age 14 and had no criminal record, according to his attorney as reported by NBC News, was left with a broken leg, a fractured ankle, a hip injury and an injury below the knee. He required multiple surgeries and has been recovering at a rehab facility under ICE custody, Teare said.

NBC News reported that Teare played newly released body-camera video he said belonged to Morales, edited to play alongside security-camera video from a local business. According to that reporting, Parra cries “You ran over me” in Spanish on the audio; Morales replies, “You got hit with the car, bro”; and Morales is later heard saying, “I was coming in and I hit him with the car.” Tyson’s channel description separately states that surveillance footage shows an ICE vehicle changing direction toward Parra-Hernandez while he was running through a parking lot. ICE had said after the collision that Parra “ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.” After the indictment, an ICE spokesperson called it “nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians” and said allegations that ICE struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are “RECKLESS and FALSE,” statements carried by NBC News, Axios and the BBC. The spokesperson also said only federal agencies can investigate federal officers acting in the course of their duties. Teare said at the news conference that the claim local authorities cannot investigate is false, NBC News reported.