Texas detainee says ICE bullet still lodged near spine

People protest outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, after a Venezuelan national was shot and wounded during a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation. — People protest outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, after a Venezuelan national was shot and wounded during an ICE operation

(Image credit: Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

A Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back of the neck by an ICE officer in Austin over the weekend told reporters Monday that the bullet was still lodged near his spine and he hadn’t “received the medical attention that I require” while being held at a detention center in South Texas. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, speaking in Spanish by phone, said an unmarked ICE SUV had turned on its police lights only after sideswiping his car twice, and the agent shot him after he asked about pulling over somewhere safer.

The Department of Homeland Security said Perez had “illegally entered our country” and “had a final order of removal.” ICE agents started chasing Perez after they found his deportation order while checking license plates and he “was not the target of a federal investigation before the encounter,” The New York Times said, citing two people familiar with the shooting. His immigration lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Perez had entered the U.S. legally in 2024 and had a valid work permit. The deportation order, which Perez had not known about before Sunday, was issued when he missed an immigration court hearing after the notice was sent to an old address, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “Not that being out of status would justify any of this at all,” she said on social media.

ICE last week erased detainees with final removal orders from its online tracking database, an “unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them” and challenge their deportation, The Associated Press said yesterday. Perez’s immigration lawyers Monday filed requests in federal court in San Antonio to compel his release and block his deportation on the grounds he was now a witness in a criminal investigation.

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