A Venezuelan man was rushed to a hospital in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, September 20, after being shot in the torso by an immigration agent, local officials said, voicing outrage and demanding an investigation into what happened. The man was in stable but serious condition with one gunshot wound suffered during a foot pursuit, the officials said, stressing that information on what occurred was "very preliminary."
"I am very angry and extremely disappointed that a person was shot on the streets of Austin by ICE," Mayor Kirk Watson said on X, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency executing the Trump administration's highly controversial crackdown.
A lawyer for the wounded man identified him as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces Perez of Venezuela. The lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said on X that Garces Perez was shot "by ICE in Austin during a DoorDash delivery this afternoon."
The shooting took place amid a "significant increase, almost overnight" of ICE operations in the Texas capital, Watson told a press conference.
ICE has not released information about the incident, and Austin authorities said they could not yet provide details such as the name, age or nationality of the wounded man, or the exact circumstances of the shooting.
Watson insisted that local law enforcement should be involved in figuring that out. "I will say, frankly, from my perspective, the credibility of ICE doing some form of investigation just by itself and excluding others would not be appropriate," Watson said.
Congressman Greg Casar echoed that sentiment, telling reporters that "ICE has not been truthful in shootings in other cities." Casar cited the January shooting of Renée Goode in Minneapolis in which video footage belied ICE accounts that she had attempted to run over a federal agent.
"It is awful that this horror has come to our doorstep," Casar said. "A few weeks ago as we saw the ICE surge come (...) I and others said that ICE needed to leave before someone was shot." The House Democrat called for the release of body camera footage of Sunday's incident.
A few hours later, Casar said Garces Perez has been "taken out of the hospital and into ICE custody." "If ICE deports him, the key witness to their shooting disappears," the lawmaker added. "He must not be removed from this country and he must receive proper medical care." Lincoln-Goldfinch, the lawyer, also said her client was placed "into custody, but we still don't know his location." Video posted by local news outlets to social media shows several dozen people protesting at the site of the alleged shooting.
Trump campaigned for the White House on a promise to expel millions of undocumented migrants and has taken a series of dramatic actions since taking office aimed at speeding up deportations and reducing border crossings. Nearly 51,000 undocumented migrants were arrested in the United States in August, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
Tasked with enforcing Trump's immigration crackdown, ICE's heavily armed and often masked agents have faced nationwide backlash for aggressive and often violent tactics, including the shooting of US citizens. They include Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old shot by ICE in March 2025, in what the Texas Tribune said was the first known killing by immigration agents of an American in Trump's second term.
