Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker delivering food for DoorDash, was shot once in the back by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Austin on Sunday afternoon. Here is what is established so far:
- The bullet fractured his clavicle and lodged near his spine, and doctors left it there, his attorney says.
- By about 4 a.m. Monday he was in the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, roughly 130 miles southwest of Austin.
- On Tuesday he was rushed back to a hospital for treatment of paralysis on his left side, then returned to the same detention center the same day.
- Administration officials concede he has no criminal history beyond his immigration status.
Most coverage has treated this as a dispute over the shooting. The shooting is still being investigated. The part that is not in dispute is what the government did with a man carrying a bullet next to his spine, and that is where the story should be.
Two Accounts
Garcés Pérez and his lawyer: an unmarked black truck sideswiped his car twice. He did not know it was ICE, tried to pull over, and was shot. At Pearsall he says he slept “on the floor in a cold room,” was “still bleeding,” and got one unidentified pill.
Homeland Security: he “tried to evade arrest.” He is stable, “in federal custody pending removal,” and “receiving medical care around the clock, including pain medication.” DHS denies he slept on the floor.
Notice what the DHS column does not say. It never claims he threatened the officer. “Tried to evade arrest” is a reason to chase a car, not a reason to put a round in a driver’s back.
Custody Is a Choice
Here is what we think. Whatever the investigations find about the trigger pull, the hours afterward were a decision, and it was the wrong one. It is hard to see why a gunshot patient with a bullet beside his spine would be cleared for a 130-mile drive to a cell, and his attorney told CNN that ICE was pushing the hospital to release him fast. Within two days of the shooting he needed treatment for paralysis. If that sequence happened to a suspect in a local police shooting, it would be the lead of every newscast in Texas.
He is not a fugitive, either. NBC News reported that he entered legally to seek asylum and was ordered removed in absentia after missing a hearing his lawyer blames on an address error.
The Witness Problem
DHS and the FBI are investigating. So is Austin police, and Travis County District Attorney José Garza has asked DHS to halt removal because Garcés Pérez is a material witness. That request is the crux. Earlier this year LNC reported that the FBI was told to stand down on ICE agent shootings; a federal probe with the shooter’s own department at the table is not a substitute for a local one.
Deport him now and the man at the center of the investigation is in Caracas. Rep. Greg Casar put it bluntly: the government “should not be allowed to shoot you and then disappear you from the country.” The next move belongs to DHS, and it will show whether anyone intends the investigation to have a witness.