By Keren Torres , Julia Harte and Kristina Cooke
BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela, Sept 24 (Reuters) – The last time Wilber Rafael Garces Perez’s mother heard his voice was on Sunday afternoon, moments after he had been shot by a federal immigration agent in his car in Austin, Texas, she told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
“They crashed into my car and shot me,” Flor Perez recalled her son telling her over a video call as she tried to calm him down from her home in Venezuela. Then she saw an officer pulling her son out of the vehicle by his arm.
Four days later, Garces Perez, 28, remains in detention with a bullet still in his back and his mother said she has not been able to speak with him.
Federal immigration agents have shot at least 20 people since Republican President Donald Trump returned to office, 7 fatally, sparking protests across the US. Critics contend that Trump’s push to ramp up deportations has led to an increasing number of violent confrontations, and accuse the administration of resisting accountability for the agents involved.
The sequence of events leading up to Sunday’s shooting remains unclear.
Garces Perez, who is from Venezuela, said he was working as a food delivery driver on Sunday when his car was sideswiped by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He said they did not identify themselves or turn on their emergency lights until after the collision.
ICE has not offered its own version of events or explained why Garces Perez was shot while sitting in his car. Its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, said in a Tuesday statement that Garces Perez was the subject of a “targeted vehicle stop” and that “resisting officers and evading arrest is dangerous for our officers, illegal aliens, and the public.”
Videos of the incident do not show the shooting, but do show Garces Perez injured in the car. The federal officer who shot him was not wearing a body camera, according to a person familiar with the incident. The officer, who has not been identified, was hired by ICE last year and had formerly worked for US Customs and Border Protection, the person said.
After the fatal shootings of two men six days apart during July traffic stops in Texas and Maine, US border czar Tom Homan said ICE agents would be required to record vehicle stops with at least one body-worn camera. ICE’s acting director vowed to equip each officer with a body-worn camera by the end of August.
Asked for comment about the officer involved and the account of Garces Perez’s mother, DHS sent an information sheet that did not address Reuters’ questions.
‘INTENSE PAIN’
Speaking from her home in Barquisimeto in northwestern Venezuela, Flor Perez, 51, said she was sleepless worrying about her son, hoping he would be allowed to see a doctor to remove the bullet and relieve his pain.
“What matters to me is that they take him to a hospital and treat him,” she said.
Garces Perez’s wound is currently stuffed with gauze that fills with blood and has to be changed two or three times a day, causing him “intense pain,” Democratic US Representative Greg Casar of Texas said at a press conference on Wednesday night, hours after visiting him at an ICE detention facility.
“If you saw Wilber, just like if you saw anybody that had been shot three days ago, you would say this person needs a doctor, not a deportation or a detention center,” said Casar.
Video released by Austin police on Tuesday from a body camera worn by one of its officers who responded to the incident shows Garces Perez inside his car with two ICE agents standing nearby. Garces Perez tells them his shoulder hurts, whereupon he is told to exit the vehicle and placed in handcuffs. A police officer then uses shears to cut away his shirt, revealing a gunshot wound to his upper back.
In its information sheet, DHS said ICE “does not and would not advise, nor be the authority on, a medical procedure” and said Garces Perez was “receiving medical care around the clock.”
Perez said her son entered the United States from Mexico in December 2023 using CBP One, an app used by former President Joe Biden’s administration to allow migrants to lawfully cross the border by scheduling an appointment with CBP.
DHS has said Garces Perez’s work permit expired in 2025, making him eligible for deportation.
Garces Perez’s “dream” in the US was to earn money to support his 7-year-old son, who was born with cerebral palsy and requires costly treatment in Venezuela. The family has not yet told him about what happened to his father.
“We’re going to have to tell the boy little by little,” Perez said, “because he asks to talk to his dad every day.”
Garces Perez’s attorneys have filed a legal petition asking that he be released from custody so he can participate in the investigation into the shooting and pursue legal status.
His first hearing before a federal immigration judge in Texas is set for next Wednesday.
(Reporting by Keren Torres, Kristina Cooke and Julia Harte. Writing by Julia Harte. Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Aurora Ellis)
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