APTOPIX ICE Shooting Austin
Authorities deploy non-lethal weapons near a demonstration where a man was shot in his vehicle by an ICE officer, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, in Austin, Texas.
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Local authorities say a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, where anti-ICE protesters gathered for hours. The Austin police chief says the man was in serious but stable condition at a hospital after being shot Sunday afternoon. An immigration attorney identified him as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man. The Department of Homeland Security says the man is in custody pending removal from the country. Austin police officers were not involved in the shooting. The city's mayor, Kirk Watson, said he wants local police involved in the investigation to provide what he called “clear, third-party eyes” in the process.
The attorney for a Venezuelan man shot by a federal immigration officer in Texas says he is being held at a detention center after being released from a hospital with a bullet still in his back. Immigration Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch told a news conference Monday that Rafael Garces Perez was making a DoorDash delivery in Austin on Sunday when immigration officers in an unmarked vehicle sideswiped his car and forced it to stop. She said Perez was then shot and taken to a hospital, but he was transferred to an immigration detention center without the bullet being removed. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has released little information about the shooting.
