The Justice Department filed assault charges Tuesday against a Venezuelan immigrant shot by a federal immigration officer in Austin.
An unsealed affidavit said the man, Wilber Garcés Pérez, struck a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the torso with his vehicle’s side-view mirror as he fled the scene of a traffic stop Sept. 20. He then led officers on what was described as a high-speed pursuit.
The ICE officer, identified only as “L.G.,” later shot Garcés in the upper back through the back right window of Garcés’s car, the affidavit said. Garcés said he was briefly hospitalized and then sent to an ICE detention facility with the bullet still lodged near his spine.
L.G. was not wearing a body camera, the affidavit said. The other officer was wearing a camera but turned it off as the officers pursued Garcés in their SUVs, it said.
ICE has faced scrutiny for officer-involved shootings in recent months, including two fatal shootings in Houston and Maine in July. The agency has ramped up arrests as part of President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations.
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