Austin ICE shooting sparks deportation fight over Venezuelan migrant's witness status

On a Monday afternoon in Austin, a Venezuelan immigrant named Wilber Rafael Garces Perez lay hospitalized with a bullet lodged in the back of his neck, and suddenly he became the center of a fight over whether he would be allowed to stay in the country long enough to testify about the officer who shot him.

Garces Perez was working as a DoorDash driver when an unmarked black truck—operated by ICE agents—sideswiped his vehicle during what he did not understand was a law enforcement operation. According to his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, he made a U-turn to escape what he perceived as a dangerous situation. The agents pursued him, struck his car a second time, and then opened fire. Garces Perez was hit in the back of the neck and pulled from his vehicle. He was hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

What followed was a collision between federal immigration enforcement and civil rights advocates who saw in this incident a pattern they had documented before. The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights organizations, issued a statement Monday demanding that Garces Perez not be deported. Their argument was straightforward: he was both a victim of the shooting and its most critical witness. "You do not deport the key witness to your own officers' use of force," said LULAC CEO Juan Peruano. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, echoed the call for accountability, saying that ICE had forfeited credibility through repeated false accounts of such incidents.

Lincoln-Goldfinch painted a picture of inadequate care in the hours after the shooting. At 4 p.m., hours after the incident, the bullet remained inside Garces Perez's body. He received no pain medication and was transferred to an ICE processing center, where he spent the night without a bed. She characterized the shooting itself as unjustifiable and used it as evidence of a broader problem: ICE officers, she argued, were over-armed, under-trained, and prone to violence in situations they were not equipped to handle safely.

Garces Perez's immigration history added another layer to the dispute. He had entered the United States in 2024 through the CBP One app, a Biden administration program that allowed migrants to request asylum at ports of entry. He held a work permit and was pursuing an asylum claim. But he also carried a removal order—one that his attorney attributed to a bureaucratic failure. Immigration court had sent notice of his hearing to an old address, even though Garces Perez had updated his information with the court. He missed the hearing he did not know about and received a deportation order in absentia. Lincoln-Goldfinch noted that such errors were common in the immigration system, which was "notorious for sending notices of hearings to the wrong address."

The shooting itself sparked immediate unrest. On Sunday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered in Austin. Police reported that demonstrators threw rocks, bottles, and concrete at officers. Three police vehicles were damaged, and multiple officers sustained minor injuries. At least three people were arrested on charges including rioting, resisting arrest, and assaulting a peace officer: Robert Padgett, 48; Armando Menagarcia, 29; and Matthew Hemby, 44.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Garces Perez was a Venezuelan national with a final removal order and that he had entered the country illegally under the Biden administration. In a statement posted to X, DHS said his condition was stable and that he remained in federal custody pending removal. The agency characterized the shooting as occurring during a law enforcement operation but offered no further details about the circumstances or the decision to use force.

The case now sits at the intersection of two competing claims on Garces Perez's presence in the country. Immigration authorities view him as someone subject to removal. Civil rights advocates and his legal team view him as a witness whose testimony is essential to investigating whether the shooting was justified. The outcome will likely turn on whether courts agree that his value as a witness outweighs the government's authority to deport him—and whether the investigation into the shooting itself will be conducted by an independent body, as local officials and advocacy groups have demanded.