ICE Agent Shoots Venezuelan Immigrant in Austin, Local Authorities Say
Christina MoralesLauren McGaughy and Devon Lum
Lauren McGaughy reported from Austin, Tex.
The injured man, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, was taken to a hospital, but his wife was not allowed to see him, said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an immigration lawyer who said at the hospital that she is now representing him and his family.
Later on Sunday evening, representatives from the hospital told Mr. Garces Perez’s wife that he had been released hours earlier into ICE custody. Ms. Lincoln-Goldfinch added that they did not know where he was.
Mr. Garces Perez was delivering for DoorDash at the time that he shot inside of a blue Toyota Corolla by an ICE agent, his wife, Elizdar, said in an interview in Spanish.
After the shooting under a highway overpass in Northwest Austin, Mr. Garces Perez called his wife, crying, to say that he was in pain after immigration agents fired at him in the vehicle. When she got to the scene, officers investigating the incident told her he had already been taken to a hospital.
The Northwest Austin area is home to many Latino residents and has had a recent surge in immigration activity, Austin city officials said at a news conference about the incident.
Local authorities said that many details about what led up to the shooting and in the moments after remained murky. Officials from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to several requests for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Department of Public Safety said they received a request for assistance from ICE at around 12:50 p.m. local time regarding a vehicle pursuit involving a blue Toyota Corolla. The shooting took place before troopers arrived.
It was unclear whether Mr. Garces Perez had been the target of an immigration operation, but Lisa Davis, the Austin police chief, said at the news conference that the shooting had occurred after a “small foot pursuit.”
Videos on social media that were verified by The Times did shed some light on the incident.
A video live streamed on Facebook at approximately 12:48 p.m. local time captured audio of sirens blaring and tires screeching as the camera whips around to show Mr. Garces Perez’s blue Toyota Corolla and an unmarked Ford SUV driven by a federal immigration officer. Both vehicles are stopped and facing in opposite directions.
The video then shows an officer exiting the driver’s side of the unmarked SUV and circling around to the back passenger side of the Toyota Corolla. The immigration officer remains to the side of the vehicle and does not appear to move out of the way as it rolls forward slightly.
Three gunshots rang out, and the Toyota continued rolling forward slowly before coming to a stop. The video then shows the officer running to the driver side of the vehicle.
Footage recorded moments later shows two bullet holes in the Toyota’s back passenger window, as well as a large dent on the front passenger side door. It showed that Mr. Garces Perez remained seated in the driver’s seat, where he applied pressure to his left shoulder with his right hand.
An officer wearing a vest marked “ERO” — denoting the Enforcement and Removal Operations branch of ICE — then walked from the unmarked SUV back to the driver side of the Toyota Corolla, holding a phone to his ear. He did not appear to administer first aid to the driver.
Another video filmed minutes after the gunshots rang out shows Mr. Garces Perez still sitting in the Toyota, holding his shoulder without any signs of medical assistance. A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and an Austin police officer helped remove him from the vehicle, and an ICE officer placed him in handcuffs.
The video then shows officers sitting him down on the curb. He appears to be bleeding from a wound in his upper left back. An Austin police officer then put on gloves, but the footage does not show any of the officers providing medical care.
“I’m very angry about this,” Mayor Kirk Watson of Austin said at the news conference. But, he added, “I’m not surprised at all. It’s happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting.”
The violence in Austin was the second Texas ICE shooting in recent months. President Trump has intensified his deportation effort with more targeted operations, which attract less attention, since two civilians were shot and killed during a crackdown in Minneapolis in January.
In July, an ICE agent in Houston shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in the abdomen while he was on his way to work at a construction site with three other men. Mr. Araujo, a father, a husband and business owner who had moved to the United States 35 years ago from Mexico died at a hospital.
Federal officials later said that Mr. Araujo had not been the operation’s intended target.
Less than a week after Mr. Araujo’s death, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant, was shot and killed by an ICE agent while he headed to work in Biddeford, Maine. Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE has said publicly whether he was the target of an enforcement operation.
More than 20 people have been fired on by federal immigration agents since Mr. Trump took office in January 2025. Six people, including three U.S. citizens, have been killed in those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles.
Months before the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, a 23-year-old American man named Ruben Ray Martinez was shot and killed by an ICE officer in South Padre Island, Texas.
Mr. Watson, the mayor, and other city officials called on federal authorities to be open and truthful about the shooting. Information initially reported by D.H.S. in other shootings has, in some cases, proven to be inaccurate.
Protesters quickly descended upon the scene of the shooting on Sunday, where more than 200 people shouted in English and Spanish at federal, state and local officers investigating the incident.
“There is a reason that people in Austin and across the country are deeply suspicious of anything that ICE has said, and there is a reason that people are hurting right now when they hear about this having happened in their city, even before they know all the facts,” said Rep. Greg Casar, who represents the area in Congress.
Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval contributed reporting.
Christina Morales is a national reporter for The Times.
Lauren McGaughy is the Texas politics correspondent for The New York Times, writing about the ways that policymakers in the second largest state are changing lives for their citizens and influencing American politics.
Devon Lum is a reporter on the Visual Investigations team at The Times, specializing in open-source techniques and visual analysis.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 2026, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: One Person Is Shot During Encounter With ICE in Austin.
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