ICE Moved a Wounded Austin Driver With the Bullet Inside

ICE shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, on a DoorDash run in Austin on September 20 and moved him into custody with the bullet still in his back. The Venezuelan delivery driver spoke Monday from the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, 135 miles (215 kilometers) southwest of the scene. He said doctors left the round in because it sat too close to his spine, and that he had not received the care he needed.

Homeland Security calls him an illegal entrant with a final order of removal and says his condition is stable. His lawyers say he came in through CBP One, sought asylum, held a work permit, then missed a hearing after a notice went to an old address. The fight now is less about the DoorDash bag than about who gets to treat a gunshot patient as a deportation file.

He Did a U-Turn and Then the Lights Came On

Garces Perez’s wife asked him to stay home on Sunday. He went out to earn money on DoorDash anyway. About 12:30 p.m., he called her shouting that he had been shot and that he was in pain. Then the line died.

He later told a press conference, by phone from detention, that an unmarked SUV sideswiped him twice before he understood ICE wanted him to stop. He said he made a U-turn under a freeway underpass, the SUV struck his blue Toyota, and only then did the agents turn on red-and-blue lights and sirens. He asked if he could pull over somewhere safer than traffic under the highway. He said an agent told him no. Then he felt one shot in his back.

“There was never a foot chase,” he said in Spanish. “I never got out of the vehicle.” Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis had told reporters Sunday that early information pointed to a small foot pursuit after a traffic stop. Local police were not part of the stop. ICE did not answer questions about why force was used.

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, his Austin immigration lawyer, said agents came out of the unmarked vehicle, shot him in the back of the neck, and pulled him out of the car. She said video does not show a man on foot. Bystander footage described since Sunday shows an agent at the rear passenger side of the car and then gunfire. Photos of the Toyota show a smashed rear passenger window and a dented door.

Homeland Security Investigations, with help from the FBI, is running the federal shooting probe. The department’s first public account went up on X late Sunday.

Homeland Security Investigations, with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is leading the investigation into the officer involved shooting of an illegal alien from Venezuela, who illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order…

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 21, 2026

The post called Garces Perez “an illegal alien from Venezuela” who “illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order of removal.” It said he was stable and in federal custody pending removal.

FROM THE STOP TO PEARSALL

1. September 20, 2026, about 12:30 p.m.: Calls his wife shouting that he has been shot, then the line drops.
2. September 20, afternoon: Austin-Travis County EMS Chief Robert Luckritz says he has one gunshot wound to the torso and is in serious condition at Dell Seton Medical Center.
3. September 20, about 4:30 p.m.: He is released from the hospital into ICE custody. His wife is not allowed to see him, and the family still does not know where he is that night.
4. September 21, about 4 a.m.: He arrives at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall after a night without a bed.
5. September 21, afternoon: He speaks by phone at Lincoln-Goldfinch’s press conference. A second lawyer, Kristin Etter, files in federal court in San Antonio to block his removal.

A makeshift shrine with flowers, candles, and a “Justice 4 Wilber” sign went up near Anderson Square and Research Boulevard, the North Austin intersection where the stop took place. Protesters filled the block that night. City leaders asked for an independent investigation and for the body-camera file.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The wound: Luckritz described one gunshot wound to the torso. Garces Perez said the round sat in his back, below the neck, too close to the spine to take out at Dell Seton.
• The job: He was in the middle of a DoorDash delivery in a blue Toyota and has no criminal record, his lawyer said.
• The custody path: Hospital to ICE the same afternoon, then Pearsall before dawn Monday, with Homeland Security saying he will stay in federal custody pending removal.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A foot chase: Davis cited a small foot pursuit. Garces Perez and his lawyer say he never left the car, and they say video backs that.
• Why the agent fired: ICE has not said what threat it claims he posed. DHS has not answered his account of the sideswipes or the request to stop in a safer spot.
• Lights and markings: He said the unmarked SUV hit him before lights and sirens came on. Federal officials have not released the body-camera file that would show the sequence.

Some clips shared online show him moving the car after the first contact, which is not the same thing as a man running on foot. That gap is why Lincoln-Goldfinch is demanding the camera file in every ICE shooting, within 24 hours.

Dell Seton Released Him With the Bullet Inside

Staff at Dell Seton Medical Center told him they would not take the bullet out because it was too close to his spine, he said. Lincoln-Goldfinch said they also skipped pain medication. He said ICE pressed the hospital to release him fast so agents could move him.

He left the trauma center about 4:30 p.m. Sunday, hours after the shooting, and went straight into ICE custody. His wife had come to the hospital and was told to leave. By Sunday night, Lincoln-Goldfinch was still posting that the family did not know where he was.

A retained round near the spine is a medical choice hospitals make when digging it out would do more harm than leaving it. That choice does not answer why a man in that condition spent the next hours as a detainee in transit, not as a patient in a bed. He said ICE questioned him with the bullet still in.

A 1,904-Bed Center and a Concrete Floor

The South Texas ICE Processing Center sits at 566 Veteran Drive in Pearsall. GEO Group runs it for ICE. The company lists capacity at 1,904 and says detainees get around-the-clock access to medical care, with physicians, nurses, dentists, and off-site hospitals when needed. It also notes a 2023 American Correctional Association reaccreditation score of 100%.

ICE Health Service Corps has described the same site as a Level 3 medical facility in Pearsall, with about 90 health workers and an average daily population of 1,600. That is the roster on paper. It is not what Garces Perez described after the van ride south.

I’m not doing very well. I have not received the medical attention that I require.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, from the South Texas ICE Processing Center, September 21, 2026 press conference

He said he slept on the concrete floor of a cell, in a very cold room, with no bed. Lincoln-Goldfinch said he spent the night without a bed and without pain medication, then reached Pearsall about 4 a.m. Monday and was interrogated. By the time he called into the press conference, a nurse had given him a pill, he said.

ICE’s own inspectors have already dinged that facility on medical timing. In a compliance inspection dated February 4-6, 2025, the Office of Professional Responsibility checked 28 detention standards and found the center in line with 25 of them. It logged five deficiencies in the other three, including two priority components. Inspectors wrote that staff completed a health assessment within 14 days in the standard, but in the files they reviewed the assessment came 16 days after arrival. Suicide-watch logs showed continuous checks at 16 to 25 minutes, past the 15-minute rule. ICE did not post a completed corrective-action plan from the prior year’s inspection, the report said.

Those findings are about ordinary intake, not about a fresh gunshot. They still show what kind of building received a man with a round next to his spine. GEO’s brochure and the inspection file describe different versions of the same hallway.

What a Missed Hearing Did to His Work Permit

Lincoln-Goldfinch said Garces Perez entered the United States about two years ago through CBP One, the Biden-era phone app that let people book a port-of-entry appointment, then applied for asylum and later received a work permit. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who represents Austin, said the same: he entered through CBP One, a path the White House shut down on Trump’s first day back.

In the two years the app ran, 936,500 people made appointments and crossed at ports, with Venezuelans among the largest groups. That is the door Garces Perez’s lawyers say he used. DHS’s Sunday post skipped that door and called the entry illegal.

After he settled in Austin, he updated his address with the immigration court, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. The court sent the next hearing notice to a previous address. He did not appear. A judge ordered him removed in absentia. She said he was not told. Federal data show nearly 90,300 in-absentia removal orders for asylum applicants as of the third quarter of fiscal 2026.

I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 20 years, doing removal defense cases, like thousands of cases in the immigration court system. This is a very common outcome that the immigration court does not properly update people’s addresses. The person doesn’t arrive, and they order them deported in absentia. I would say, maybe daily in my law practice, we see this happen.

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, immigration attorney, September 21, 2026 press conference

Etter’s Monday filing does not fight the existence of that final order. It asks to keep him here so he can seek a U-visa as a victim and witness of a crime, now that the shooting itself is under investigation. The paper status and the gunshot are now the same case file.

Work permits tied to humanitarian parole have been moving targets since 2025. DHS ended the CHNV parole programs on March 25, 2025, and said it would revoke C11 employment authorization documents on April 24. A Massachusetts judge paused parts of that plan on April 14. The Supreme Court lifted the pause on May 30, and DHS told agencies it was terminating that parole and the work cards that came with it. Garces Perez’s lawyers describe a CBP One-plus-asylum path, not a CHNV sponsor parole. The climate is the same: a card that let him take DoorDash shifts can sit next to a removal order the court mailed to the wrong house.

His wife has legal status in the United States. He was the one on the road.

Texas Already Lost Two Men at ICE Traffic Stops

Lincoln-Goldfinch called ICE officers over-armed, overpaid, undertrained, and violent, and she asked for a halt to ICE traffic stops. The Austin stop is the third time ICE has shot a person in Texas since Trump returned to office. The first two men died.

THE TEXAS ICE TRAFFIC SHOOTINGS

In Houston, ICE used unmarked cars, boxed in a work van, and an agent fired through the vehicle. The department first said Salgado Araujo weaponized the van. Passengers later said ICE hit them and that he did not ram anyone. He had not even been the target of that operation. The same unmarked-car pattern, and the same first story about a vehicle used as a weapon, has followed other federal immigration shootings this year, including the January 2026 killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

ICE’s vehicle-stop guidance says deadly force is allowed only when agents believe lives are in danger, and that the first step in arresting someone in a car is not to reach in and grab the person. Justice Department rules on firing at cars are tighter still: an officer may shoot only if someone in the car threatens deadly force by means other than the vehicle, or if the driver is using the car itself to kill or maim, and only when there is no reasonable alternative, including stepping out of the path. DOJ research on pursuits also discourages unmarked cars in chases, because other drivers may not know what they are looking at.

Those rules sit on a shelf while street arrests climb. DHS said ICE arrested 50,925 people in August, a one-month record. Secretary Markwayne Mullin called it promises made and promises kept. ICE’s San Antonio area of responsibility, which includes Austin, has been among the offices that shifted hardest toward street arrests. A delivery driver with a paper removal order is now in that stream, on public roads, in an unmarked-SUV stop that ended with a round next to his spine.

The Filing That Asks a Judge to Stop the Clock

Casar wrote to the DHS secretary demanding an independent investigation and said ICE should leave Austin. On X he said the government should not be allowed to shoot someone from an unmarked vehicle and then cover it up, and that officials want to deport him before he can testify. Mayor Kirk Watson has also pressed for a full accounting.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said she is seeking a temporary restraining order and a habeas petition to keep Garces Perez in the country while the shooting is investigated. Etter’s San Antonio filing is the same race against the removal calendar, built on a U-visa theory: if the shooting is a crime under review, he is a victim-witness, not only a file with a final order.

WHAT HIS LAWYERS AND ALLIES ARE ASKING

• The camera file: Body-worn video on every ICE operation, released within 24 hours of a shooting, which Lincoln-Goldfinch said they still do not have.
• A doctor, not a van: Casar and the legal team want him released to medical care, not held for interrogation with the round still in.
• A hold on removal: Etter asked a federal judge to block deportation long enough for a U-visa claim, writing that this administration has sped up enforcement against people tied to incidents with federal officers.
• An outside probe: Casar wants an investigation that does not stop at HSI and the FBI, the same agencies that sit inside the department that employs the shooter.

The louder public split is not whether a removal order was on a computer when agents ran the stop. It is whether ICE can fire, take a wounded man from a trauma center, park him on concrete in Pearsall, and move a deportation while the camera file stays inside the building. Gig delivery is what put him on Anderson Square with that order in the system. The unmarked SUV is what found him.

As of the Monday press conference he was still at Pearsall, still carrying the bullet, and still in line for removal. A judge in San Antonio now has a request to keep him in the country long enough to be a witness to his own shooting.