A 28-year-old Venezuelan man who was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while making a food delivery in Austin is now being held at a South Texas detention facility with a bullet still embedded in his back, according to a spokesperson for his immigration attorney.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was working a DoorDash delivery route in Austin on Sunday when he was shot during a traffic stop involving an ICE officer. He called his wife around 12:30 p.m. to tell her he had been shot. She has not been able to speak with him since.
Perez was discharged from the hospital and transferred to the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, roughly 130 miles southwest of Austin. His attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch spoke with him by phone and learned he was being questioned by authorities while still carrying the bullet in his back and without access to pain medication.
Spokesperson Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz said Perez entered the United States through a legal parole program as an asylum seeker and has no criminal history. She emphasized that the use of force by the ICE officer was not justified under the circumstances.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it was investigating the incident and stated that Perez had a final order of removal but provided no further details about what led to the shooting. Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis confirmed local officers were not involved and said the man was struck once in the torso and was initially hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
Perez’s family and legal team were unable to obtain any information from the hospital on Sunday until attorneys there notified them around 6 p.m. that he had already been discharged an hour and a half earlier. Lincoln-Goldfinch had to use legal databases to track down where he was being held after ICE refused to confirm his location.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson called for local police to be included in the investigation and said it would be inappropriate for ICE to conduct a self-investigation into the shooting. Roughly 100 protesters gathered near the scene Sunday in response to the incident.
The shooting is the latest in a series of officer-involved incidents tied to ICE enforcement operations that have intensified under President Donald Trump’s second term. Federal immigration authorities reported more than 50,000 arrests in both July and August of this year. At least four people have been fatally shot by federal officers during immigration enforcement actions in 2026.