Three days after a Venezuelan man was shot and wounded by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin while making a food delivery for DoorDash, many of the details of what happened remain unclear. The revelation that the as-yet-unnamed ICE agent who shot 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez on Sunday was not wearing the body camera issued to him removes an immediate source of clarity from the case. The incident took place just before 1 p.m. local time near Anderson Square and Research Boulevard, in the city’s north side.
Footage shared on social media shows an unmarked vehicle driven by ICE agents ramming Garcés Pérez’s car and an ICE agent firing at least three shots in its direction, one of which appears to have hit the man. During a news conference on Sunday, Chief of Austin-Travis County EMS Robert Luckritz said he believes the man was shot once in the torso. Garcés Pérez’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said the man was shot in the back of the neck.
Garcés Pérez was initially brought to Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas and released into ICE custody on Sunday night in "stable" conditions, as reported by Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. But during a press conference on Monday, Garcés Pérez said, with the help of a translator, that doctors did not remove the bullet inside him because it was close to his spine. After speaking publicly about the lack of medical treatment he needed, Garcés Pérez was taken back to a hospital on Monday night, according to Lincoln-Goldfinch.
After being given morphine for the pain, he was released again to the detention center with the bullet still lodged in his body, the attorney said. Democratic leaders and immigration advocates in the city and Texas have questioned what prompted an ICE agent to shoot Garcés Pérez and whether the man has received proper medical treatment after the incident, calling for a transparent investigation into what happened. But many questions linked to the incident still remain unanswered, as Lincoln-Goldfinch and the federal government give contradictory accounts of Garcés Pérez’s immigration status and what happened on Sunday.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said that Garcés Pérez entered the U.S. lawfully in 2024 as an asylum seeker through a parole program and had a valid work permit. DHS has described him in a statement shared with Newsweek as an "illegal alien" who "illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order of removal." The program, which started under the Biden administration, was ended by President Donald Trump on his first day in office. On Tuesday, DHS said that Garcés Pérez’s work permit had expired last year and a judge had ordered his deportation after the man missed a hearing in immigration court.
According to Lincoln-Goldfinch, Garcés Pérez did not attend the hearing because notice was sent to a former address. In its statement to Newsweek on Sunday, DHS said that the shooting in Austin occurred "during a law enforcement operation today in Austin, TX." DoorDash confirmed that Garcés Pérez was out on a food delivery for the company. It told Newsweek that the company is actively investigating the incident but has no additional details to share.
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