One week ago, Garces Perez was delivering food for DoorDash in North Austin. Today, the 28-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker is still inside the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, still carrying the bullet that lodged near his spine, and — according to the most recent reporting from CBS Austin — still without a confirmed date for the surgery a specialist recommended earlier in the week.
Casar’s Visit, and a Monday Deadline
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar visited Garces Perez at the Pearsall facility on Sept. 23 and described someone in a wheelchair, his arm in a sling, with heavy bruising across his torso, according to a press release from Casar’s office. Wound-care staff have been cleaning the injury two to three times daily since the shooting, and Garces Perez only received a stronger dose of pain medication roughly an hour before Casar arrived.
Casar and more than 100 House Democrats have set a Monday, Sept. 28 deadline for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to answer a formal list of questions about the shooting and the medical response — two days before Garces Perez is due in federal court.
Why Doctors Aren’t Calling It Neglect — Yet
Not every medical expert treats the delay itself as a red flag. Dr. Amy Zeidan, an Atlanta emergency physician who studies detainee care, told KUT that physicians “do discharge people not infrequently with ballistic injuries, including retained bullets,” since operating close to the spinal cord carries its own paralysis risk. A separate specialist who reviewed comparable cases told the Texas Tribune that a follow-up consult, rather than immediate extraction, is a fairly standard next step for this kind of wound.
DHS has repeatedly pointed to that same distinction. In a statement carried by NBC News, the agency said Garces Perez is “receiving medical care around the clock, including pain medication,” and argued ICE has no authority to direct a medical procedure — meaning, in the agency’s account, the surgery timeline isn’t its decision to make.
A Deportation Already Blocked, a Bigger Hearing Still Ahead
What hasn’t made it into every version of this story is that Garces Perez’s removal is currently on hold. On Sept. 23, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia granted an emergency order stopping any deportation while a federal lawsuit and habeas corpus petition filed by attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch proceed, according to CBS News. The order requires Garces Perez to appear in person in San Antonio on Sept. 30 — a hearing his legal team calls critical, since he’s also the central witness to his own shooting…