Houston

The Chargers’ only move at the NFL trade deadline has been called off.

The Denver Broncos announced Wednesday night that a proposed trade for Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley “will not be finalized.”

The Broncos did not explain why the deal was abandoned, but the trade was pending the results of a physical. Henley was listed on the injury report last week with a shoulder injury, but he practiced Thursday and Friday before playing in the Chargers’ 44-22 loss to the Houston Texans on Sunday.

Shortly before the NFL trade deadline on Tuesday, the Chargers reached an agreement with the Broncos for Henley in exchange for a 2027 fourth-round draft pick and a 2028 fifth-round pick.

Chargers veteran safety Tony Jefferson was among the players who made it clear on social media they were not happy about the trade. After the trade fell through, Jefferson posted, “Had to get lil bro back to the bolt.”

Henley also posted a response to his X account.

Henley staying in L.A. is the latest twist in an 0-8 season for the Chargers that has bewildered fans and pundits alike and has left the team’s coaching staff and front office under fire. It also means the Chargers didn’t make any moves toward their future amid a lost season.

One of the Chargers’ top defensive players and a team captain, Henley has started all eight games this season. He had a season-high 10 tackles against Houston and also intercepted a pass in that game. A third-round pick in the 2023 draft, Henley has 317 tackles and five sacks over 56 career games.

Henley, 26, is in the final year of his rookie deal. It remains to be seen how the Chargers’ winless season, coupled with their efforts to trade him, will affect their chances of re-signing him.

People stopped for minor traffic violations will no longer be referred to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The mayor of Houston, the most populous city in the US state of Texas, has ordered the city’s police force to sharply limit its cooperation with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

John Whitmire’s executive order came on Friday, days after Democrats swept statewide offices in the traditionally Republican state.

According to the order, Houston police will contact ICE only when a person is being arrested for a jailable offence, according to the Reuters news agency.

Whitmire said he had consulted Texas’s newly elected governor, lieutenant governor and comptroller before acting, and that the move was meant to reduce fear and anxiety across the city.

“Elections matter,” Whitmire told reporters. “I do this to begin a healing process,” he said, adding he hoped his executive order would become a model for other Texas cities.

Joining Whitmire at the news conference, Houston Police ⁠Chief J Noe Diaz said he supported the change and that his department had already begun to implement the new policy.

Under the new rules, people stopped for minor traffic violations will no longer be referred to ICE simply because they have an administrative immigration warrant.

The decision reverses a policy Whitmire put in place in April under pressure from outgoing Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott had threatened to withdraw about $110m in state public safety grants, arguing that a city council ordinance limiting police contact with ICE breached Senate Bill 4, a 2017 state law that bars local police from restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also sued the mayor, the city council and the police chief over the ordinance.

“We’re taking an interpretation of the law today, working with the newly elected members of the state leadership, in implementing this policy,” Whitmire told reporters. “We don’t want people to worry about ⁠their workers, their family members, their students.”

The issue has drawn intense scrutiny in Houston. The Houston Chronicle found that city police contacted ICE at least 107 times in the first eight months of 2025, compared with nine times in the whole of 2024.

In July, an ICE agent shot dead Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a longtime Houston resident.

FIEL Houston, an immigrant rights group, called the order a victory for the city but said it was long overdue. “Today Houston won. Today our community can breathe easier,” FIEL Executive Director Cesar Espinosa said in a statement to KPRC.

Whitmire said he expected Houston’s approach to become a model for other cities. In Austin, Mayor Kirk Watson asked city officials on Friday to revise their own policy on ICE warrants.

HOUSTON — The mayor of Houston on Friday said the city would limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, heralding “a new model” of immigration enforcement after Democrats won power in Texas for the first time in decades.

Mayor John Whitmire said the city would go after immigrants “that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education.”

A traffic incident “will not even … you write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way. No contact with (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) over nonviolent, non-jailable offenses. It reduces the fear and anxiety.”

Details of the change were to be spelled out in an executive order but the move by the nation’s fourth-largest city is one of the first steps to curb ICE’s powers since Tuesday’s election.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Houston has sparked protests after an ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican homebuilder this summer and another struck a man with a car.

A grand jury last week indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors say Morales intentionally rammed his car into Miguel Parra Hernandez, whose leg was broken. ICE has asserted that Parra Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, an account that prosecutors say is contradicted by video.

Oyekanmi writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 31, 2026 2:31 PM PT

A federal immigration officer charged with aggravated assault after he ran over a Mexican man with his car in Houston will turn himself in on Monday, according to his attorney.

Mario Alberto Morales, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, struck Miguel Parra Hernandez, a 48-year-old construction worker, with his unmarked SUV on Oct. 10, as he chased Parra Hernandez through a parking lot. A grand jury indicted Morales on Friday on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Morales is planning to turn himself in at a courthouse sometime Monday, his attorney, David Lindenmuth, told the Associated Press. Lindenmuth previously told the AP that the incident was “clearly just an accident” and that local officials had “invented a crime out of thin air.”

Parra Hernandez broke his leg and is recovering at a rehabilitation facility while in federal custody, Harris County Dist. Atty. Sean Teare told reporters Friday.

ICE has said Parra Hernandez ran in front of Morales’ car.

Previously released surveillance camera video shows Morales’ vehicle drive over a median and strike Parra Hernandez as he runs away.

Teare played video from Morales’ body camera on Friday that showed the agent making sharp turns with his steering wheel. He then stops and exits the vehicle and turns toward Parra Hernandez, who is lying on the ground, screaming.

“I was coming in, and I hit him with the car,” Morales can be heard saying after another ICE agent arrives.

Parra Hernandez told deputies that he fled the traffic stop when Morales started pulling on a mask, and Morales “threw the car” at him, according to a Harris County Sheriff’s Office incident report reviewed by the AP. Morales told deputies that he did not brake before he hit Parra Hernandez, but that he did not intentionally strike him, according to the report.

ICE said after the incident that the target of the operation was a man named Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who the agency said was seen getting into a car with Parra Hernandez. Mendoza-Cervantes’ daughter told the immigrants’ rights group FIEL that her father has been dead for nearly a decade.

Morales is among a small group of federal agents who have been criminally charged for wounding people during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. ICE agent Christian Castro pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he lied to the FBI after he shot and wounded a Venezuelan man as immigration agents swept Minneapolis earlier this year.

Many other ICE shootings, including some that were fatal, have not resulted in charges for the agents involved.

Morales, 34, has served as an ICE agent for a little over a year, according to Lindenmuth.

Teare said Friday that authorities have a “significant amount of information” on Morales, and that, in his experience, law enforcement agencies would not hire someone with his background. He did not elaborate.

Morales was charged with a misdemeanor in 2013 for stealing four DVDs, according to Harris County court records. Those charges were dismissed after he paid a $270 fine and struck a plea deal.

Morales unsuccessfully ran to represent Texas’ 34th Congressional District in this year’s election cycle under the name “Bam Morales,” which Lindenmuth confirmed. Morales served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and later as a corrections officer and law enforcement officer, he wrote in a Ballotpedia candidate survey. He wrote that his top priorities were veterans’ rights, economic issues and service guided by the Christian principles of “compassion, integrity, service, and accountability.” He listed illegal immigration as one of the country’s greatest challenges.

Morales also wrote in the survey that he was endorsed by an organization called Make America Godlier Again.

Morales appeared at a 2024 Christian conference held by televangelist Johnson Suleman. In video of the conference, Morales appears to act as a Spanish translator as Suleman serves free food and “extends his touch of love to migrants.”

“I want to pray for the immigrants,” Suleman said, as Morales translated those words into Spanish. “I bless you. May the Lord grant your request and open your doors.”

Mayes-Osterman and Brook write for the Associated Press.

The officer faces charges after allegedly striking a fleeing construction worker with an SUV during an immigration raid.

A grand jury in Texas has indicted a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer accused of deliberately running over a Mexican construction worker during an operation in Houston this month.

ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the October 10 incident, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced on Friday.

Criminal charges against federal immigration officers have been rare during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, although several encounters involving officers have prompted investigations.

Morales is accused of striking 48-year-old Miguel Parra-Hernandez, an immigrant who has lived in Harris County for more than 30 years. Teare said that Parra-Hernandez had no criminal record.

Parra-Hernandez was running away from federal agents when an unmarked black Jeep Cherokee struck him in a car park near Clay Road and Highway 6, according to investigators. He suffered multiple fractures to his right leg and an ankle injury which required surgery.

The indictment follows a dispute between local prosecutors and federal authorities over what happened. ICE has maintained that Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, dismissing the allegations that the officer intentionally struck him as “reckless and false.”

But Teare has said surveillance video contradicts the agency’s account.

It shows the SUV crossing a median and pursuing Parra-Hernandez as he runs away. Although another vehicle obscures the moment of impact, the video shows the man on the ground moments later.

Authorities also released body-camera footage on Friday. In the recording, Morales can be heard acknowledging that he struck Parra-Hernandez with his vehicle.

Teare also accused federal authorities of failing to cooperate with the investigation, including by removing the Jeep before local investigators could examine it for potential evidence.

A search warrant obtained by local media shows investigators had not been granted access to the vehicle as of October 23.

The case has also raised questions about the operation’s intended target. ICE said agents were searching for a man identified as Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, whom they believed to be travelling with Parra-Hernandez.

But Mendoza-Cervantes’s daughter told The New York Times that her father died in 2017. Parra-Hernandez’s family has disputed that the two men knew each other.

The Morales indictment comes as the Harris County District Attorney’s Office continues investigating the fatal shooting of another Mexican, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, on July 7.

An ICE officer, Gregory Feathers, has been accused of firing at the vehicle Salgado Araujo was driving on his way to work in Houston.

Federal authorities said the officer acted in self-defence, a claim the surviving passengers in the vehicle dispute.