Federal Prosecutors Charge Delivery Driver With Assault After ICE Officer Shot Him in Austin

A Venezuelan asylum seeker who was shot in the back by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a roadside encounter in Austin, Texas, has been charged in federal court with assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, is facing a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if he is convicted.

The case stems from a September 20 incident that began while Garces Perez was working as a DoorDash food delivery driver near a shopping centre in the Texas state capital. He was wounded during the encounter and has remained in a federal detention facility in south Texas since that day, according to his legal team.

Prosecutors' account of what happened is set out in a federal complaint filed on Monday. According to the document, immigration officers first noticed that the car Garces Perez was driving had its emergency lights flashing and ran a database check. The query showed the vehicle was registered to him and that he was subject to a final order of removal from the United States.

When officers approached the vehicle, Garces Perez passed his driver's licence through a partially opened window but did not get out of the car, the complaint says. He asked the officers to wait until his wife could arrive to collect the vehicle. Court documents describe the exchange up to that point as pleasant and not aggressive — a detail that appears to have been included to establish that the initial contact was not confrontational.

The circumstances changed roughly a minute later, according to the filing. Court documents say Garces Perez abruptly closed his window and drove off, striking one of the officers in the torso with the driver's side mirror of his vehicle. That officer pursued him in his own car and caught up with him a short time later. In the complaint, the officer alleges that Garces Perez then attempted to drive into him, which the officer says prompted him to open fire.

Garces Perez has given federal investigators a markedly different account of the moments immediately before he was shot. He told investigators that, after a brief chase, a law enforcement sport utility vehicle struck his car, causing it to spin around, according to an affidavit. He said the officer then opened fire, shooting him in the back. His account, if accepted, would place responsibility for the collision on the officers rather than on him.

Crucially, there is no publicly available footage of the events described in the complaint, including the shooting itself. Videos that have circulated online show only the aftermath, with Garces Perez injured inside his car. The complaint instead relies on unreleased body-camera footage from one of the two ICE officers who stopped him.

The evidentiary picture is therefore uneven. The affidavit notes that the second officer was not wearing a body camera at the time of the stop. That officer says he was struck by the side mirror of Garces Perez's car and that he subsequently shot him. As a result, the account of the shooting given by the officer who opened fire rests on the statement of a colleague who was not wearing a camera, while the only visual record of the encounter remains unreleased.

Garces Perez's lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said on Sunday that the bullet was still lodged in his body and that he has a fractured clavicle. In a social media post, she explained that his supporters were concerned he could develop sepsis or suffer permanent damage if he did not undergo surgery soon. The Department of Homeland Security has countered that Garces Perez is receiving adequate medical care.

His legal team is also seeking to block his removal from the United States. Garces Perez is due to appear before a federal immigration judge on Wednesday for a separate hearing on whether he is permitted to remain in the country, a proceeding that will be conducted independently of the criminal case.

His immigration history is at the centre of the dispute over whether he should have been stopped at all. Garces Perez entered the United States in 2024 through CBP One, an online programme expanded under former President Joe Biden that allowed asylum seekers to book appointments with immigration authorities at the US-Mexico border. President Trump ended the programme on his first day back in office, accusing it of contributing to an immigration crisis in the US. His administration has since relaunched the app as CBP Home, a self-deportation portal.

Lincoln-Goldfinch has said Garces Perez was lawfully seeking asylum in the United States and held a valid work permit. She has asserted that he was ordered to be deported after failing to appear at an immigration court hearing, because the notice of that hearing had been sent to an old address — an explanation that, if correct, would raise questions about the due process afforded to a person in his position.

The arrest and prosecution come amid a broad surge in immigration enforcement during Trump's second term, with ICE reporting more than 50,000 arrests in both July and August. Within that enforcement climate, the Austin case stands out for the collision of its elements: a shooting of an unarmed man in the back, a charge brought by the same agency whose officers are under scrutiny, and a key piece of evidence — the body-camera video — that has not been made public.

Observers of immigration litigation say the contested accounts will ultimately turn on what a court concludes from the officers' statements and the withheld footage, and the decision over his deportation will be made in a separate forum. For now, Garces Perez faces both an assault charge carrying up to two decades in prison and an immigration hearing that could determine whether he is sent back to Venezuela, while his lawyer continues to press for both his medical care and his release from detention.