ICE Officer Turns Himself In After Being Indicted For Deliberately Running Over A Random Person
All good things come to those who wait? Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes, you need to take action to make good things happen. Other times, you just have to hang back and wait for the slow-moving wheels of justice to do their thing.
It's the latter here. Last month, an ICE officer deliberately (allegedly) ran over a fleeing person with their ICE-mobile. The whole thing was caught on camera, albeit not by any of the cameras ICE officers are supposed to be wearing. Instead, it was caught by a CCTV camera operated by a local business.
ICE claimed migrant Miguel Parra-Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle," which resulted in the severe injuries one might associate with being run over by an SUV. This narrative lasted less than a day before CCTV footage showed an ICE vehicle crossing a street and accelerating through a parking lot before accelerating through Miguel Parra-Hernandez. (It also showed ICE officers moving crime scene evidence - the vehicle Parra-Hernandez exited - from the street where it stopped to the parking lot where he was run over.)
As anyone can see from the footage, the ICE vehicle swung in and took the man down, even though there was no public safety" reason that might possibly justify running over some random fleeing person.
Local Houston (TX) prosecutors felt the same way, especially after it was revealed that the person ICE was actually hunting had likely been dead for nearly a decade. They moved forward with criminal charges, resulting in a grand jury indictment of ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales. This indictment was especially unique, given where it happened.
The agent, Mario Alberto Morales, 33, is facing state charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, said Sean Teare, the district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He added that Mr. Morales has not surrendered. Efforts to reach Mr. Morales were not successful, and it was unclear whether he had legal representation.
Mr. Morales is the first federal agent to face charges in Texas as part of President Trump's immigration crackdown.
Things have changed since this October 30th report from the New York Times. Mr. Morales has now surrendered, as NBC News reports:
ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales turned himself in Monday after being indicted last week in connection with running over a man who was on foot.
In connection" is an extremely generous interpretation of the incident caught on tape by an entity ICE officers apparently didn't expect to be engaged in always-on recording. For now, though, Officer Morales remains more free than the man he (allegedly) ran over, who is presumably still recovering from multiple surgeries to repair his crushed legs. Morales was hit with a $30,000 bond, but has reportedly bonded out, which puts him back on the streets, but presumably not back in an ICE uniform.
More digging into this officer's time as an ICE goon has managed to highlight pretty much everything that's wrong with ICE's current hire-now-worry-about-it-later surge that began shortly after Trump took office for a second time.
Training has been minimized and hiring standards have been lowered. Morales was part of that surge, hired by ICE in August 2025. Texas prosecutors highlighted this lack of experience and presumed lack of training during their statements following the indictment. Morales is represented by an idiot, which doesn't mean he's representing himself. Instead, he's represented by an actual idiot, who thinks actions by red state prosecutors are politically motivated - a wild-ass claim buttressed by even more wild-assed claims about what Morales was doing when he (apparently and [still] allegedly) decided to run over a fleeing person.
This Democratic district attorney has great issues with the conservative Republican Party government's ICE agenda, and he's trying to pick a fight with them, but he's smashing this individual to do so," [David] Lindenmuth said.
Lindenmuth said the car strike was accidental and happened as Morales reacted to avoid hitting a car that was in front of him.
I'm not sure what smashing this individual" means in this context. I assume it's a Freudian slip that refers to his client smashing" an individual" - an act that led to his client being indicted on vehicular assault charges.
As to the rest of his statement - that his client was just trying to avoid hitting another car in the parking lot - well, let's go back to the recording and let it speak for itself:
Then there's this new fact, which was not captured by the CCTV camera: Morales not only didn't care what happened to the person he decided to deliberately/allegedly strike with his vehicle, but he also didn't care about the other detained migrants that were involuntary passengers when he decided to turn his car into a guided missile:
According to the DA's office, Morales had two handcuffed arrestees sitting in the back of his car without seat belts when the vehicle hit Parra.
According to public records and other information obtained by prosecutors, Morales's law enforcement experience is limited to a stint as a military police officer (less than 2 years) and seven months as a prison guard. Those seven months mean even less than the less-than-illustrious career that saw Morales exit the military with pretty much the same rank he entered it with (Private First Class).
Here's the upshot of the seven months Morales spent as a Texas correctional officer:
He resigned in 2018 while on probation with the agency for falsification of records, specifically documenting security rounds as completed when they had not been conducted...
That apparently led to seven years of unrelated employment. No wonder Morales took a shot at ICE's $50,000 signing bonus, especially when he had a few years of law enforcement-adjacent experience," even if that experience was vastly overshadowed by his inability to do his job honestly and/or remain employed in the law enforcement field.
Morales isn't a poster boy for ICE misconduct. He's just another contributor, which makes him as unique as an involuntary reflex. The only thing that's different is that he got caught. Now, we just have to hope that it sticks.