- An ICE agent shot and wounded 28-year-old DoorDash driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in North Austin on Sept. 20, during what his attorney describes as a vehicle pursuit — not the routine traffic stop some early reports suggested.
- The agency reviewing the shooting, Homeland Security Investigations, is ICE’s own enforcement arm rather than an outside watchdog, a distinction driving calls from Austin’s mayor, the Travis County DA and members of Congress for a truly independent inquiry.
- Street arrests by ICE in Houston have climbed more than fourfold over the past year, and Austin shop owners near the shooting site report sales down by as much as 60% as fear spreads through Central Texas’s Latino community.
A Delivery Run Interrupted by Gunfire
Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan national, was out delivering meals for DoorDash on the afternoon of Sept. 20 when his route took him through the Anderson Square shopping area on North Austin’s Research Boulevard, a stretch of road that doubles as U.S. Highway 183. What happened next left him with a bullet lodged near his spine and Austin’s Hispanic community rattled for days afterward.
Garcés Pérez managed to reach his wife by phone in the middle of the encounter, shouting that he’d been shot before the call cut out, according to an account his immigration attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, gave reporters the following day. He was treated at a local hospital and, by Monday night, transferred to the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, more than 100 miles from where he was shot…