Congressman: Venezuelan man shot by ICE in Texas told he needs surgery

A Venezuelan man shot by a federal immigration officer in Austin and then moved to a detention center has been told by a specialist that he needs surgery to remove a bullet still lodged near his spine, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar said Wednesday.

Casar, whose district includes Austin, visited the south Texas facility where Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, is being held. He said the man was in a wheelchair and still in pain, but did not say whether the family had decided on surgery. The congressman was the first member of Congress to see Garces Perez in person since the shooting.

Garces Perez was shot Sunday by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and later taken into custody. The Department of Homeland Security has said he is receiving around-the-clock medical care and pain medication, and has been taken to a hospital twice since the shooting.

"If they want to say it's great medical care, they should start providing great medical care today by having him leave the detention center, go to a hospital or to a doctor, and do not delay his surgery if that's what his family chooses to do," Casar said.

He added that the wound on Garces Perez's back remains bloody and that medical staff change his gauze two or three times a day. After the visit and a press conference, DHS issued a statement denying claims that Garces Perez was forced to sleep on a floor or was prevented from having the bullet removed, saying ICE would not advise on a medical procedure for a detainee.

Garces Perez's attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, has said he was making a DoorDash delivery when ICE officers in an unmarked truck sideswiped his car twice. He was shot, taken to a hospital, and then released into ICE custody with the bullet still in his back, she said. ICE and DHS have not said what led to the shooting beyond describing Garces Perez as "the subject of a targeted vehicle stop."

ICE has not said whether the agent who fired was wearing a body camera. At the start of September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he expected all field agents to have them by the end of the month. Austin police released body camera footage from officers who arrived just after the shooting, showing Garces Perez hunched over in the front seat of his car, grabbing his shoulder and rocking back and forth. An officer later cut off his shirt, revealing a wound in his upper back.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said Garces Perez entered the U.S. in 2024 using CBP One, a program begun under President Joe Biden that allowed migrants to make appointments with U.S. authorities to be considered for asylum. President Donald Trump ended the program on his first day in office. She said Garces Perez was an asylum seeker with a valid work permit, and that a judge issued a deportation order after he missed an immigration court hearing because the notice was sent to a former address.

The shooting came at the end of a summer in which ICE sharply increased enforcement in Austin and surrounding suburbs, increasingly targeting immigrants without criminal records in public places. ICE made more than 1,000 arrests in Austin, Pflugerville and other nearby cities during June and July, an increase of more than 80% from a year earlier, which had been the previous peak, according to ICE data provided to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Unlike some other places, the increases in Austin were not driven by partnerships with local law enforcement agencies or by picking up jail inmates. The data shows ICE officers made the vast majority of arrests in the community through traffic stops and other enforcement methods. Nearly two out of three people arrested in the Austin area had no criminal convictions and no pending criminal charges.