A Texas ICE agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan migrant who was reportedly in the country illegally on Sunday, sparking angry protests near the scene in Austin, according to local authorities and the man’s attorney.
The officer allegedly shot the migrant — who was identified by his lawyer as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces Perez — once in the torso shortly before 1 p.m. following a “small foot pursuit” on the city’s north side, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said at a media briefing.
The shooting, which happened under a highway overpass, left Garces Perez in serious but stable condition at a nearby hospital, according to Austin Mayor Kirk Watson.
The wounded man is an alleged illegal immigrant from Venezuela with a final order of removal, Department of Homeland Security sources told Fox News.
More details about what led up to the gunfire and the ICE operation were not immediately available. Local officials said all information they had was “extremely preliminary” and called for a full investigation into the shooting.
“The city of Austin deserves answers,” Davis said. “We’re going to get all those questions answered, and we’ll be as transparent as we can be.”
The Venezuelan national’s immigration attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, told the New York Times that she and the man’s wife have been blocked from seeing Garces-Perez and do not know if he is still at the hospital or has been moved into ICE custody elsewhere.
The Post has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information.
The latest ICE-involved shooting was immediately slammed by Austin leaders and quickly drew crowds of protesters.
“I’m very angry about this,” Mayor Watson said at the press conference Sunday afternoon, blasting the federal agency. “[But] I’m not surprised at all. It’s happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting.”
Dozens of protesters gathered at the scene not long after the shooting, leading to clashes with the authorities, Fox News reported.
The controversial immigration agency has been involved in a number of fatal shootings this year.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, was shot and killed by ICE officers in Houston in July after he had been caught up in an operation the agency had been conducting in the city.
Days later, Joan Sebastian Guerrero was also shot and killed in Biddeford, Maine, after authorities said that he tried to run over ICE agents with his car.
