Texas grand jury indicts ICE agent over Houston SUV strike on immigrant

Indictment on a deadly weapon charge

On Friday, 30 October, a grand jury in Harris County, Texas, indicted Mario Alberto Morales, a 33-year-old agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). District Attorney Sean Teare said the charge is aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, with the SUV treated as the weapon. A conviction would carry a prison term of two to 20 years, Teare said. He described the evidence before the grand jury as among the clearest he has prosecuted or investigated. Teare also rejected the idea that federal credentials place an officer beyond local law, and he put that position directly:

“Just because you have an ICE badge or any badge, if you are in Harris County and you are violating our community members' constitutional rights, there will be repercussions.”

What prosecutors allege

On 10 October, Morales was driving an unmarked Jeep Cherokee when agents tried to stop a pickup truck carrying two men. Both men jumped out and ran. Video played at the news conference showed a 48-year-old Mexican construction worker running across a restaurant parking lot when the pursuing SUV swerved toward him. Teare said the man had lived in Harris County for more than 30 years, with no criminal record and no pending immigration proceedings. The district attorney's office described multiple leg fractures and a hip injury, and the allegation is that the driver struck him on purpose. Press accounts of the footage differ: one describes the SUV inching toward him as he ran, while another says a second vehicle blocked the view of the impact.

ICE disputes the account

ICE says the man stepped in front of the agency's vehicle, and it has called the allegation of an intentional strike reckless and false. An ICE spokesperson dismissed the indictment as a political move by sanctuary politicians in Houston, and the agency argued that only federal agencies may investigate federal officers:

“Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies.”

The agency has also said Morales and other agents were looking for a different man, a deportation target. Relatives of that man say he died nearly a decade earlier. Teare's office has found no evidence that the injured man and that other man were in a vehicle together, contrary to ICE's account. Family members of the injured man said they had never heard of the other man, and an immigrant rights group said the man's daughter told them he had died in 2017.

Victim, hiring and wider concerns

Teare said the injured man is still rehabilitating from his injuries and remains in ICE custody. He also said Morales was among the "surge hires" brought on to speed up President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. Teare declined to give details of the agent's prior work history, but said he had reviewed thousands of job applications for law enforcement from around the state and was not familiar with any agency that would have hired this person based on his past. He voiced concerns about other people hired in that surge and about how long they are trained and what the training covers. Teare tied the wider climate to a documented drop in reports of domestic violence, aggravated robbery and sexual assault from victims who feared deportation, and he added:

“An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill, or violate the constitutional rights of anyone.”

Wider pattern and what comes next

Friday's indictment came little more than five months after an ICE officer was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime over a January shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minnesota. Teare's office is also investigating a fatal ICE shooting in Houston in July of an immigrant who, like the man struck by the SUV, was not the intended target of an operation. That shooting sparked protests in the country's fourth-largest city. Morales could try to move the case to federal court, arguing that federal law shields him from state prosecution. Teare said he was prepared to litigate such a move.