Harris County District Attorney’s Office
A screenshot of surveillance video shows an ICE agent driving towards Miguel Parra-Hernandez.
After Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced a felony indictment on Friday against a federal immigration agent who struck a man with his vehicle, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claimed the DA was acting outside of his jurisdiction.
“This is nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians,” the ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies. Local governments do not have the authority to run such an investigation.”
Legal experts, however, disagreed.
Sign up for the Hello, Houston! daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.
“If a federal agent simply walked up to the mayor of Houston and shot him, the mere fact that he’s a federal agent and on duty does not stop the local DA’s office from charging him with murder because his actions are clearly unreasonable,” said Tom Hogan, assistant professor at the South Texas College of Law.
On Oct. 10, ICE agent Mario Alberto Morales allegedly ran over Miguel Parra-Hernandez on purpose, breaking his leg and ankle. A spokesperson for ICE asserted Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle while fleeing — an account disputed by his attorney.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to the crash.
“Our vehicular crimes division immediately began investigating the incident, just as they would any other serious crash involving a pedestrian,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on Friday. “Based on the evidence gathered, investigators developed serious concerns about the actions of the agent involved, including the circumstances surrounding the vehicle pursuit and the manner in which Mr. Parra-Hernandez was struck.”
In a written statement, a spokesperson for ICE said “allegations that ICE struck Miguel Parra-Hernandez intentionally are RECKLESS and FALSE.”
Hogan said the prosecution’s case against Morales will center on “whether or not they acted within a reasonable fashion.”
Under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and Supreme Court precedent, federal agents are broadly protected from criminal prosecution when acting in the course of their official duties, if their actions are deemed “necessary and proper,” David Kwok, director of the University of Houston Law Center’s Criminal Justice Institute, said.
“This is so-called ‘Supremacy Clause immunity,’ and there’s two prongs to it — the actions must be authorized by federal law, and they must be necessary and proper in that situation,” Kwok said. “The first part, ‘authorized by federal law,’ is relatively generous. The ‘necessary and proper’ — that’s where most of the fight is going to be about.”
Harris County prosecutors face an additional hurdle. Because Morales is a federal agent, the defense could attempt to have the case transferred to federal court. There, Morales might benefit from friendlier judges, according to UH Law Center professor Seth Chandler.
“In federal court, you do have a greater prospect, I think, of getting more conservatively-oriented, law enforcement-oriented judges than you might in Harris County, and then you also get the benefit of the Fifth Circuit (Court of Appeals), which is well known as a fairly conservative circuit,” Chandler said. “That doesn’t mean that they don’t care about civil liberties. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about the law. But on balance, I suspect that the United States government is going to prefer to have this litigated in its own courts.”
First, Morales must be taken into custody.
His attorney, David Lindenmuth, told Houston Public Media Morales was in the Houston area and planned to surrender himself on Monday.
“This is clearly a political prosecution. There is no other way to describe this,” Lindenmuth said. “This was nothing more than an accident, and the driving force behind this accident is somebody who fled from law enforcement.”
Another ICE agent, Christian Castro, was the subject of an extradition battle in August and September after prosecutors in Minnesota sought his transfer from a Cameron County jail. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t comply with the extradition request before Castro was released and later arrested in Minnesota.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Morales’ purported location and comment from his attorney.