ICE Officer Mario Morales Indicted for Running Over Undocumented Man in Houston
ICE officer Mario Morales, on the job for just over a year, surrendered Monday after being indicted for allegedly running over a man during a chase. The case has intensified scrutiny over Trump's rapid ICE hiring surge.
ICE Officer With Troubled Work History Indicted Over Houston Crash
ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales, 33, surrendered to authorities on Monday after being indicted last week on a second-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, nbcnews.com reports. Morales was released on a $30,000 bond following a hearing before District Judge Matthew Peneguy in Harris County, Texas.
The incident, which took place on 10 October, involved Morales allegedly running over Miguel Parra Hernandez during a foot chase. Footage from cameras operated by local businesses and bystanders captured Morales pursuing Parra, who had exited a stopped truck and begun running. Morales' vehicle made a sharp left turn and struck Parra.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said the video led investigators to conclude that Morales had deliberately driven into Parra to stop him. "These are not things that a law enforcement officer would ever do to someone that they had detained, with or without force, if they were complaining of injury," Teare told NBC News. Morales' own body camera recorded him saying to Parra, "You got hit with the car, bro," before attempting to move him — an action Teare described as "careless."
According to the DA's office, two handcuffed arrestees were seated in the back of Morales' vehicle without seat belts at the time of the collision.
Scrutiny Over Trump's Rapid ICE Hiring Surge
The case has intensified criticism of the Trump administration's push to rapidly expand the ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in order to fulfil the president's mass deportation pledge. The timing coincides with voters heading to the polls for midterm elections.
Last year, several Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News that some ICE recruits had failed to meet hiring standards, including candidates with disqualifying criminal backgrounds or those lacking physical or academic requirements. DHS said at the time that most new recruits were former law enforcement officers. Earlier this month, the agency announced it would retrain thousands of officers who had received expedited training as a result of the hiring surge.
Morales had been hired by ICE in August 2025 and had been on the job for just over a year at the time of the incident. His attorney, David Lindenmuth, said Morales had received more training than other hires and accused Teare of engaging in character assassination. "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," Lindenmuth said. Lindenmuth attributed the collision to an accident, stating that Morales swerved to avoid a vehicle in front of him.
An ICE spokesperson rejected the allegations in an email, stating that claims Morales struck Parra intentionally were "RECKLESS and FALSE." The spokesperson added that ICE officers "are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct."
A Work Record Raising Questions
Before joining ICE, Morales had worked a series of roles in law enforcement and corrections. He served as a corrections officer for Cameron County in Olmito, Texas, from August 2012 to January 2013. He then enlisted in the Army, serving as a military police officer for two years without deployment, before leaving in 2014 with the rank of private first class, according to an Army spokesperson.
Morales subsequently joined the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as a mid-level 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, according to TDCJ spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez. Lindenmuth said he did not immediately have further details on the probation.
Morales also worked stints as a guard, including at the Port Isabel Detention Center, an ICE facility that has historically served as a final processing point before deportation. He is originally from Brownsville, Texas, on the US-Mexico border.
On Friday, Teare said he was "not familiar with a single agency that would have hired" Morales, given his employment record.
Lindenmuth, however, described his client in different terms. He said Morales is an ordained pastor of a Christian-based church, studied to become a police chaplain at Universidad Cristiana Internacional El Shaddai in Dallas, and has carried out missionary work abroad. "He is a faith-based person," Lindenmuth said. "He is a good person who tries to help people."
First ICE Indictment in Texas
Morales is the first ICE officer to be indicted in Texas. The case follows a separate incident in Minnesota, where ICE enforcement officer Christian Castro was charged in May in connection with the January shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis. Castro was subsequently indicted on federal charges in September for making false statements to investigators.
Parra Hernandez, the man struck by Morales' vehicle, is currently in rehabilitation recovering from multiple injuries, under the supervision of ICE officers.
Teare drew a direct line between the incident and broader institutional failures. If a comparable incident had occurred within a Harris County agency, he told NBC News, "every one of those people, whether or not they had gotten into any trouble or not, would be taken off the street and sent back through the full academy."
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