Man shot by ICE, sent to jail with bullet inside him

A Venezuelan national shot and wounded by a US immigration agent in Texas was jailed with the bullet still inside his body, his lawyer said on Monday.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, told reporters he was delivering an order for DoorDash on Sunday when his vehicle was rammed by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and he was shot.

“I’m in a lot of pain, because the shot fractured my clavicle, and at the hospital where they took me they couldn’t remove the bullet, because it’s close to the spinal cord... I’m not doing very well, I still have the bullet inside,” he told reporters by phone.

Flowers and candles are placed near the site where a Venezuelan man was shot in his vehicle by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Austin, Texas, on Monday.

Photo: AP

The shooting in Austin, Texas, marked the latest instance of violence by ICE agents tasked with enforcing US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Homeland Security Investigations, which is a part of ICE, is leading the investigation into the shooting with the assistance of the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security said.

Garces Perez had “illegally entered our country under the [former US president Joe] Biden administration and had a final order of removal,” the department said on social media.

However, Garces Perez’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, maintained he was in the US “legally with a work permit.”

She told a news conference that he was transferred from a hospital to a detention center in Pearsall, about 215km southwest of Austin.

“He was shot here in his back, and they didn’t take the bullet out, and they didn’t give him pain medication, and they transferred him to ICE, to a processing center where he spent the night without a bed,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.

Garces Perez on Monday confirmed that account.

“I was on my way with an order from the DoorDash app, and then a truck pulls up next to me. It doesn’t turn on its lights or anything, it just tries to hit me,” he said.

Then a black pickup cut him off, and an agent got out and demanded his documents, Garces Perez said. Garces Perez asked to be allowed to pull over from the middle of the road, but agents refused.

“I made a U-turn and that’s when he started chasing me, thinking I was going to run away, but I was looking for a place to leave my car safely,” Garces Perez said. “That’s when he hit me twice and shot me.”

He does not know how many shots were fired at him.

“There is absolutely zero justification for having shot him,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “This is why we’re calling for a stop to ICE traffic stops. ICE officers are overarmed, overpaid, undertrained and violent.”

Garces Perez said after he was shot, an ambulance arrived and he could not move.

At the hospital, he said he was told tests were being run to prepare for surgery, but the operation to remove the bullet was halted.

“A doctor comes in and tells me: ‘no,’ because they were in a hurry to discharge me and have me taken” to the detention center, Garces Perez said.

“I told the doctor: ‘How are you going to leave the bullet in there if it still hurts?’” he added.

He maintained he did not receive adequate medical care at the hospital.

In the early morning, a nurse gave him a painkiller, he said.

Then he was taken to a room with no bed at the detention center, he said.

A makeshift shrine with flowers, candles and a sign reading “Justice 4 Wilber” was placed near the site of the shooting.

On Monday, a work crew painted over expletive-laced graffiti nearby, which expresses local outrage about ICE and the ongoing immigration crackdown.

About 51,000 undocumented migrants were arrested in the US last month, according to the department’s figures.

Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, was shot by ICE in March last year, in what the Texas Tribune said was the first known killing by immigration agents of a US citizen in Trump’s second term.

More recently, a Mexican man, Lorenzo Salgado, died in July after he was shot by an ICE officer in Houston, Texas.

Two US citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by federal immigration agents in separate incidents in Minnesota during a crackdown on undocumented migrants in the northern state earlier this year.