On Sunday, September 20, 2026, an ICE officer shot a man on the north side of Austin, Texas. The man was hit once in the torso. He was in serious but stable condition at a hospital, the Associated Press reported, and anti-ICE protesters gathered at the scene within hours.

His family's immigration lawyer identified him as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old from Venezuela. He was at work. DoorDash confirmed he was in the middle of a delivery when he was shot, and said it was investigating.

By that evening, the Department of Homeland Security had already done two things. It said the man it shot was "in federal custody pending removal." And it announced who would investigate the shooting: Homeland Security Investigations, with help from the FBI.

Homeland Security Investigations is one of ICE's own three main branches. ICE shot a man, and ICE is investigating.

What we know about the shooting

Austin police were not part of the operation, the city's police chief said. The shooting happened after a traffic stop. The Texas Department of Public Safety said ICE called it for help with a vehicle chase at about 12:50 p.m., and by the time state troopers arrived, the man had already been shot.

Austin City Council member Mike Siegel said the ICE officer rammed the man's car, then got out of his own vehicle and fired at least five times. A video posted to social media shows tires screeching, a person getting out of a dark SUV next to a stopped blue sedan, and at least three gunshots as that person walks toward the car.

Afterward, a dark blue Toyota Corolla sat under an overpass with a damaged passenger door and what appeared to be bullet holes.

Garces Perez called his wife from the car. He was "yelling in pain," according to the family's lawyer.

DHS told its side first — and fast

DHS did not say what the man did that led an officer to shoot him. What it did say, in a statement the same day, was who he was: "an illegal alien from Venezuela, who illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order of removal."

The family's lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, disputes the first part. "Based on the information available to us, he entered the United States lawfully," she told CBS. She later told the AP she did not know his current immigration status.

That's worth slowing down on. Nobody has explained why a man delivering food needed to be shot. But within hours of the shooting, the government's public account was already about his paperwork, and a political jab at the last president.

We have seen this before. After ICE agents killed two men during traffic stops in one week in July, DHS first claimed one of them tried to use his car as a weapon, then walked it back. In the other case, in Houston, the agency's account was directly contradicted by witnesses in the van.

Released into ICE custody — and nobody told his wife

The family's lawyer said the family struggled to get any information from the hospital about how he was doing or where he was. She said several officers threw them off the hospital grounds, treating them as trespassers.

Just before 7 p.m., his wife learned from the hospital's attorney that her husband had been released into ICE custody a few hours earlier. "No one bothered to update her," the lawyer told the AP.

A man was shot in the torso around lunchtime. Before dinner, the hospital had released him into the custody of the agency that shot him, and his wife found out after the fact.

Austin is asking for the one thing ICE hasn't given

Austin's leaders are not asking for much. They are asking for someone other than ICE to look at what ICE did.

Mayor Kirk Watson said he wants Austin police involved so they can provide "clear, third-party eyes." He said he does not think it would be appropriate for ICE to run the investigation on its own. The Travis County district attorney's office asked for local police and prosecutors to be included, and for "access to the evidence."

The mayor was also asked whether the city even knew where the ICE agent was — because agents have left states after earlier shootings. "We do not know that," he said.

That fear is not paranoid. This site has already reported on an ICE agent charged in Minnesota with shooting a man through the front door of a house — who then sat in Texas for at least two months while the paperwork to send him back for trial went unsigned.

Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat who represents part of Austin, demanded "a full, independent investigation, immediate release of the body camera footage, and accountability for any ICE officer who broke the law." DHS has not said whether the agent was even wearing a body camera, NBC News reported.

This is what the surge looks like

This did not happen in a vacuum. ICE has been pushed to arrest as many people as it can. It passed 50,000 arrests a month for the first time in its history this summer, in July and August. We covered how agents hit that July record: airline passengers, a creek in a national forest, trucks stopped in four states.

Traffic stops are a big part of it. In July, after two men were killed in stops in a single week, ICE itself paused most vehicle stops for a safety review. President Trump overruled his own agency within a day, calling the traffic stop one of ICE's "most important and effective Crime Fighting tools."

Two months later, a stop in Austin ended with a delivery driver shot in his car.

And Republicans in Congress have paid for all of it. Not one House Republican voted against the $70 billion ICE funding bill, which passed by two votes, and 52 Republican senators voted for it. When Houston's Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed in July, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said nothing for eight days.

What the record shows

On September 20, an ICE officer shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a DoorDash driver in the middle of a delivery, once in the torso on an Austin street. Within hours, the hospital had released him into ICE custody, the Department of Homeland Security said he was "in federal custody pending removal," his wife learned about it after the fact, and the shooting investigation went to Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE itself. Austin's mayor and district attorney have asked to be part of that investigation; DHS has not said whether the officer wore a body camera.

Source

Jesse Bedayn, Christopher Weber and Rebecca Boone, ICE agent shoots and wounds man in Texas, officials say, The Associated Press, September 21, 2026. Photo: AP Photo/Joel Angel Juarez.