AUSTIN, Texas — The Venezuelan man shot by ICE in Austin during a traffic stop spoke from immigration detention Monday and said he was in a lot of pain and still had a bullet lodged in his back.
Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was shot early Sunday afternoon by an ICE officer while making deliveries as a DoorDash driver. He is being held in immigration custody at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas.
Garcés Pérez said by phone during a news conference Monday that he was shot near the clavicle and that he has not received the medical attention he needs.
He said doctors did not remove the bullet because it was close to his spine and ICE was pushing the hospital to release him into the agency’s custody in a hurry.
Garcés Pérez said he arrived at the detention center around 4 a.m., where he complained about his ongoing pain. He said he did not receive medical treatment at the detention center or pain relief when he arrived until he was given an unknown pill Monday morning. He added that he had to sleep on the floor in a cold room.
Lawmakers, advocates and Garcés Pérez’s attorney demanded his release, alleging he was taken from a hospital into custody within four hours with a bullet still lodged in his back.
“Wilber is a victim of the shooting and the most important witness to it. You do not deport the key witness to your own officer’s use of force,” Juan Proaño, the CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said during a news conference Monday afternoon that was also attended by Garcés Pérez’s wife.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency to which ICE belongs, said in a statement late Sunday that Garcés Pérez was in stable condition and was in federal custody pending removal from the U.S.
A senior administration official told NBC News on Monday that Garcés Pérez did not have a criminal history beyond being in the country illegally.
According to Garcés Pérez’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, he entered the country legally and was seeking asylum. She said Garcés Pérez told her he had let the immigration court know when he had a change of address, but a notice to appear in court was sent to an old address. Because of this mistake, Garcés Pérez missed his court hearing and was ordered deported in absentia, according to his attorney.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said in a post on social media later Monday that after the press conference she received a call from another detainee who allegedly told her “officers came in and handled Wilber roughly.”
“According to this detainee, Wilber then lost feeling on the left side of his body, including his arm and leg,” she wrote on Instagram.
She added that according to the other detainee, Garcés Pérez was then “handcuffed, shackled at the feet, placed in a waist chain, and taken to a hospital” and she was waiting to find out how he was doing and what his current condition was.
“We need answers. We need to know that Wilber is safe and receiving appropriate medical care. So far, he has not,” the attorney stated.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lincoln-Goldfinch’s statements.
A person who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting but who requested anonymity told Noticias Telemundo that he was waiting on customers at the ice cream shop where he works when he heard gunshots and ran outside, where he saw immigration agents surrounding a car.
“I approached the car and saw a man who looked sad and with his eyes full of tears. I asked him what happened to him, and he just told me, ‘I was shot in the back,’” said the person, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades.
“You aren’t prepared to see someone like that. It makes you very angry, it pains you and you don’t know what to do,” he said.
Lincoln-Goldfinch shared Garcés Pérez’s account of the shooting, saying he was making a delivery when “an unmarked black truck sideswiped him.”
“He didn’t know it was ICE, and he did a U-turn under the highway. The truck chased him and sideswiped him again, and the agents came out and shot him in the back of the neck and pulled him out of the car,” she said.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the statements made during the news conference or for comment on earlier statements made by Lincoln-Goldfinch.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, said Monday that “the federal government should not be allowed to shoot you and then disappear you from the country so that no one can be held responsible.”
“I am demanding, and Congress is making very clear to the head of ICE and to Secretary Mullin, that Wilber Garcés needs to be released to medical care and should not be in Pearsall,” he said, referring to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “He needs to be released right now.”
A social media video verified by NBC News captures the sound of tires screeching followed by a person exiting a dark-colored SUV as a blue sedan is stopped next to it, both vehicles facing each other. The sedan also appears to be damaged on the passenger side.
At least three gunshots are heard as the person approaches the sedan and runs up to it as it slowly lurches forward. The video shows the person standing next to the sedan’s driver’s side as it stops in front of an intersection.
Another video shows the blue sedan with its driver’s side door open and Garcés Pérez hunched over in the driver’s seat, holding his left upper chest, near his shoulder, as multiple law enforcement officers gather around.
The woman taking the video says, “Why did he do that to him?” The officers tell her that an ambulance is coming.
The video shows Garcés Pérez being taken out of the car and handcuffed behind his back. The agents make him sit on the ground. There appears to be a large bloodstain down his back. The officers cut open the back of his shirt, revealing a bullet hole.
An officer asks the woman taking the video if she saw what happened. In Spanish, she replies that “they just shot him because he didn’t want to stop” his vehicle.
“This is unjust,” she says as she’s recording the video.
A Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson said the agency had received a request for assistance from ICE for a vehicle pursuit involving a blue Toyota Corolla.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said earlier she was with Garcés Pérez’s wife at the hospital where he was taken, hoping to get information on his condition, but they were escorted from the premises.
“We not only were lied to and told that he wasn’t there, but we were thrown off the hospital grounds by several officers who treated us as trespassers,” she said.
DHS has not provided any information about whether the ICE officer involved was wearing a body camera or if Garcés Pérez was the target of an operation.
Local officials at the news conference decried the increase in arrests in their state and called for an independent investigation into the shooting.
Austin police are investigating. Police Chief Lisa Davis said Monday that the investigation will be impartial and based on the facts. She did not have additional information to share about the shooting.
“I understand that that is frustrating. I also recognize the concern and uncertainty this incident has created in our community,” she said in a video statement. “But it is important that we distinguish between what we know, what we have heard and what the evidence ultimately establishes.”
The shooting comes as ICE has greatly increased enforcement across the country this summer, making more than 50,000 arrests a month for the first time in its history in July and August.
It also comes two months after an ICE officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, in Houston during an attempted traffic stop to conduct an immigration arrest. DHS has said Salgado Araujo was in the country illegally and attempted to run over agents, but it has not provided evidence of its claims.
About a week after the fatal shooting in Houston, another ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, after a traffic stop. Neither man was ICE’s intended target during the immigration operations.
