HOUSTON, Texas — A Harris County grand jury on Friday, October 30, indicted ICE agent Mario Alberto Morales, 33, on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, alleging he drove his vehicle into Miguel Parra Hernandez, who was on foot, during an immigration operation earlier this month, the Harris County District Attorney's Office said Friday.

Source: NBC News

The indictment was handed up by the grand jury on Friday morning. District Attorney Sean Teare and the Harris County Sheriff's Office scheduled a news conference for later on Friday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the indictment, NBC News reported. An indictment is an allegation, not a conviction: Morales is presumed innocent unless prosecutors prove the charge in court.

This is a major new development in a case Awaaz Punjab has been following since mid-October, when this site reported the vehicle strike itself, the district attorney's aggravated-assault investigation and the plan to take the case to a grand jury. Until now, the agent had not been publicly named in reporting on the case; the indictment names Morales and turns an investigation into a criminal charge.

What happened on October 10

The collision happened on Saturday, October 10, in northwest Harris County, near Clay Road and Highway 6, during what ICE described as a targeted enforcement operation to arrest a man the agency identified as Jose Mendoza-Cervantes. ICE said officers watched the target and Parra Hernandez get into a vehicle and attempted a stop; both men pulled over and ran on foot near a shopping center.

Security video obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston shows a white truck facing the opposite direction of traffic on a busy roadway, with Parra Hernandez and another man getting out and running. At about the same time, the video shows another vehicle — unmarked — jumping a yellow median and heading in Parra Hernandez's direction, swerving left toward his path in front of a truck stopped at the shopping center. When the parked truck moves away, a man can be seen lying on the pavement behind the ICE vehicle.

The October 10 collision left Parra Hernandez, 48, with hip, leg and ankle injuries, including a broken leg, according to his family and representatives. Earlier reporting by the Associated Press and NBC News described multiple fractures in his right leg, a fractured ankle and an injury near his hip, and said he underwent surgery and remained in ICE custody while hospitalised.

Two accounts, now before a court

ICE's account has not changed since the day of the collision. In a statement issued after it, the agency said Parra Hernandez “ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.” ICE has previously said accusations that its agent intentionally struck Parra Hernandez were “reckless” and “false.” A senior DHS official told NBC News earlier this month that DHS had placed an officer on administrative leave after the collision, and the department said several officers at the scene were wearing body cameras whose footage was being reviewed in an internal investigation.

Source: NBC News / ICE statement

Teare's office reached the opposite conclusion from the video its investigators collected from local businesses and bystanders. Teare, who led the county's vehicular crimes division for seven years before becoming district attorney, said the footage made it “pretty obvious” the strike was intentional, telling NBC News that if so, “that is an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Texas” — the vehicle itself treated as the deadly weapon. His office also sought data from the ICE vehicle, including a crash recorder that can show speed, steering and braking, and interviewed a witness who had been handcuffed in the back of that vehicle.

Source: Texas Gazette (AP / NBC News reporting)

The man ICE said it was seeking — and the family that says he died in 2017

ICE has said it was not targeting Parra Hernandez, a Mexican construction worker who had been doing stucco work, according to an advocate. His attorney, Kim Bruno, told NBC News he has lived in the United States for 34 years, having arrived at age 14, and has no criminal record; DHS has said he was in the country without legal permission. Bruno also says her client does not know Mendoza-Cervantes and had never heard of him. The immigrant advocacy group FIEL Houston has said Parra Hernandez told them he ran because the vehicles were unmarked, had tinted windows and used no sirens, so he could not tell whether they were law enforcement.

The identity of the operation's target is also disputed. A spokesman for the district attorney's office told the Associated Press that Mendoza-Cervantes was not in the vehicle. Separately, the daughter of the man shown in a photograph ICE circulated as its target told FIEL and Bruno that the photograph actually showed her father, Jose Hector Jimenez Mendoza, who died in 2017 while being pursued by federal immigration authorities as he tried to re-enter the United States; the family provided a Mexican death certificate, which has been turned over to the district attorney, FIEL's executive director Cesar Espinosa told the AP. FIEL has sought Parra Hernandez's release from custody.

Source: Associated Press via VisaVerge

Why this case matters beyond one street in Houston

Criminal prosecutions of federal immigration agents by local prosecutors are rare in the United States, and this case is being watched as a test of where the line sits. A parallel case in Minnesota, where an ICE agent faces state assault charges from a February highway encounter, is currently before a federal judge on whether it can be moved out of state court under the federal-officer removal law — a ruling lawyers expect to be cited in Houston, even though it would not bind Texas courts in the Fifth Circuit. Prosecutors in Harris and Travis counties are also investigating two other ICE shootings this year, including the July death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, according to AP reporting.

What happens next

Teare and the Sheriff's Office were expected to give more detail at their Friday news conference, including how the case will proceed. No arraignment date or bond information for Morales had been announced in the initial reports. For Parra Hernandez, the open questions are his medical recovery, whether he remains in ICE custody or is released while the criminal case proceeds, and what immigration action, if any, follows. Awaaz Punjab will update this story as the court record develops.