Terrifying bystander video shows Texas ICE shooting
A bystander filmed an ICE shooting in North Austin, Texas, where a man was hospitalized with a gunshot wound.
An attorney for the Venezuelan immigrant shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Austin, Texas, disputed authorities’ initial account of the encounter on Sept. 21, saying video footage does not show a foot pursuit before the officer opened fire.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, who represents 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, said he remained detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas, with a bullet still lodged in his body. During a call from detention played on speakerphone at a Sept. 21 news conference, Garcés Pérez denied running from officers before he was shot.
“There was never a foot chase,” Garcés Pérez said in Spanish. “I never got out of the vehicle.”
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said on Sept. 20 that preliminary information indicated the shooting followed a “small foot pursuit.”
The competing accounts are fueling demands for an investigation independent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. DHS has said its Homeland Security Investigations division is leading the inquiry with assistance from the FBI.
The department has faced scrutiny over its descriptions of other shootings involving immigration officers, including a Minnesota encounter in which an ICE officer now faces criminal charges alleging he lied about being attacked before opening fire. Videos released after shootings in Chicago and South Padre Island, Texas, have also contradicted or raised doubts about key elements of the government’s initial accounts.
“We are fed up with ICE and DHS telling us lies about what has happened in these incidents where people are being murdered and shot,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “We want the truth.”
DHS described Garcés Pérez in its statement as “an illegal alien from Venezuela” who entered the United States illegally under the Biden administration and had a final removal order. The department said he was stable and remained “in federal custody pending removal.”
“This is a developing situation, and we will update the public when more information becomes available,” DHS said.
The department did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s questions about whether Garcés Pérez ever left his car, whether ICE supplied Austin officials with the preliminary account of a foot pursuit, or what prompted the officer to fire. DHS also did not respond to questions about Garcés Pérez’s medical care in detention.
Lawyer: Bullet remains lodged near Garcés Pérez’s spine
Lincoln-Goldfinch said Garcés Pérez told her he was making a DoorDash delivery shortly before 1 p.m. on Sept. 20, when an unmarked black truck sideswiped his car. He did not know the people inside were federal officers and made a U-turn beneath a highway before the truck followed him and struck his car again, she said.
An officer fired at the back of Garcés Pérez’s car once it had come to a stop, Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
“The agents came out and shot him in the back of the neck and pulled him out of the car,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
Videos recorded near the scene and posted on social media appear to show a blue Toyota Corolla and a dark SUV traveling beneath a highway overpass before a series of loud bangs. Footage recorded after the shooting shows Garcés Pérez wounded inside the car as federal officers stand nearby. Photos from the scene show damage to the Corolla’s passenger side and what appear to be bullet holes in a rear passenger window.
Austin-Travis County emergency crews took Garcés Pérez to Dell Seton Medical Center in serious but stable condition.
Though officials initially said he had been shot in the torso, Lincoln-Goldfinch later said the bullet entered near the back of his neck and remained lodged near his spine. Garcés Pérez said he complained about the pain, but doctors did not remove it because of its location.
“The doctor said, ‘Hey, they’re in a hurry to get you out of here,'” Garcés Pérez said he was told.
He was discharged from the hospital later Sept. 20 and transferred into ICE custody. Lincoln-Goldfinch said federal officers took him to the detention center in Pearsall, some 130 miles southwest of Austin, where he arrived at 4 a.m. and was made to sleep on the floor.
Speaking from detention on Sept. 21, Garcés Pérez said he had not received proper medical care.
“I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound, and I have not received the medical attention that I require,” Garcés Pérez said.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said federal officers had also questioned Garcés Pérez despite his injury. His attorneys filed a federal lawsuit seeking his release and an order preventing the government from deporting him while the shooting and the circumstances surrounding it are investigated.
Austin mayor: City’s police, Texas Rangers should participate in probe
Garcés Pérez entered the United States legally about two years ago after scheduling an appointment through CBP One, a Biden-era program that allowed immigrants to present themselves at ports of entry and be considered for temporary humanitarian parole, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. He later applied for asylum and received authorization to work, she said.
An immigration judge ordered him deported in absentia after a notice of a hearing was mailed to an old address and he failed to appear, according to Lincoln-Goldfinch. She said Garcés Pérez did not know about the deportation order.
“The court is notorious for sending notices of hearings to the wrong address, so it appears that that is what happened with him,” she said.
Austin police were not involved in the federal operation or the shooting, Davis said. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson has said the city’s police department and the Texas Rangers should participate in the investigation, questioning whether an inquiry conducted solely by the federal agencies involved would be credible.
“From my perspective, the credibility of ICE doing some form of an investigation just by itself and excluding others would not be appropriate,” Watson said Sept. 20.
Democratic Rep. Greg Casar called for the immediate release of body camera footage and a “full, independent investigation.”
“DHS has repeatedly lied about the facts following violent encounters involving agents and have blamed victims,” Casar wrote in a letter to DHS and ICE leaders. “As a result, any narrative from DHS regarding this shooting must be viewed with deep skepticism.”
Casar also demanded accountability for “the agent responsible for any and all wrongdoing.” He said the officers involved should be suspended and remain in Austin while the investigation is underway.
Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett similarly said the government’s accounts of previous enforcement encounters made it impossible to simply give ICE “the benefit of the doubt.”
Previous ICE-related shootings
In Minneapolis, DHS initially said two Venezuelan men attacked ICE officer Christian Castro in January with a broom handle and snow shovel before Castro fired what the department called a defensive shot. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials publicly repeated that account.
Federal and state prosecutors now allege video evidence disproved Castro’s version. They say Castro was standing when he fired through the front door of a home, striking Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg, and that no one attacked him with a broom or shovel as he described.
Castro pleaded not guilty this month to six federal charges of making false statements to the FBI. He also faces Minnesota charges of second-degree assault and falsely reporting a crime. The Justice Department dropped the criminal cases it had brought against Sosa-Celis and another Venezuelan man after reviewing the video.
In Chicago, DHS said federal officers were “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars” before a Border Patrol agent shot U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez five times in October 2025. Body camera and surveillance footage released this year showed two vehicles following the agents, not 10, and did not show Martinez’s vehicle ramming theirs.
The footage instead appeared to show an agent steering toward her vehicle before opening fire. The Justice Department later dismissed its criminal case against Martinez with prejudice.
Video also raised questions about DHS’s description of the March 2025 fatal shooting of Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, by a Homeland Security Investigations officer in South Padre Island. DHS said Martinez intentionally struck an officer with his vehicle, but the footage did not clearly show an officer being hit.
A grand jury declined to indict the officer.
Those earlier cases have become central to the demands for outside oversight as federal authorities investigate another shooting by one of their own officers.
“Families get stereotypes and shifting stories instead of the truth,” said Roman Palomares, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “No agency can be the sole judge of its own conduct. Not DHS. Not ICE. And on this record, not the Department of Justice.”