Austin Owns the Aftermath After ICE Shoots a Driver

An ICE agent shot a 28-year-old DoorDash driver in North Austin on Sunday, then federal officers took him from a city hospital into ICE custody. Austin police did not fire. They also did not run the stop.

Mayor Kirk Watson, Police Chief Lisa Davis and EMS Chief Robert Luckritz faced cameras at City Hall at 4 p.m. without anyone from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The wounded man, identified by his lawyer as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, had already become the city’s patient, the city’s crime scene and, by evening, a federal detainee whose wife could not find him.

A Shooting Under the Research Boulevard Overpass

Austin-Travis County EMS was notified at 12:56 p.m. on September 20, 2026, of a shooting in the 8000 block of Anderson Square, near Research Boulevard and U.S. 183. A city alert also placed the incident at the 7000 block of West Anderson Lane, the same overpass cluster. Crews were on scene in three and a half minutes.

Paramedics found one adult man with a gunshot wound to the torso. Luckritz said they moved him off the pavement within nine minutes of arrival and took him to Dell Seton Medical Center in serious but stable condition. He would not say whether the round entered from the front or the back.

THE AFTERNOON ON ANDERSON SQUARE

1. 12:56 p.m., September 20, 2026: EMS is called to a reported shooting in the 8000 block of Anderson Square.
2. Three and a half minutes later: Paramedics find an adult man with a single gunshot wound to the torso.
3. Within nine minutes of arrival: He is taken to Dell Seton Medical Center in serious but stable condition.
4. 4 p.m.: Watson, Davis and Luckritz brief reporters at City Hall. ICE does not appear.
5. About 4:30 p.m.: A hospital attorney tells the family the patient has been released into ICE custody.

Davis said Austin officers were not part of the operation. They blocked southbound Research Boulevard frontage and the lanes on Anderson Square. She had been told the shooting followed a traffic stop and a brief foot pursuit. She also said she had not been briefed by federal authorities, and that every fact she had was preliminary.

Watson Says ICE Cannot Investigate Itself

Watson did not treat the shooting as a routine federal use of force. He said he was very angry and extremely disappointed, and that he was not surprised. He pointed to what he called the rogue nature of ICE and the chaos he said the agency is fomenting in other cities. Austinites, he said, have a right to know what happened and a right to feel safe.

A person being shot on the streets of Austin by someone purporting to be law enforcement, particularly when it’s ICE, is something that causes me to be unhappy and angry.

Kirk Watson, Mayor of Austin, City Hall news conference

He asked Davis to put Austin’s Special Investigations Unit on the case, the same unit that handles Austin officer-involved shootings, and to bring in the Texas Rangers because the Texas Department of Public Safety had early access to the scene. He said ICE investigating itself would not be appropriate, and that a probe done right would only add credibility.

Davis said her unit was already there, that she had spoken with the Rangers and with Homeland Security Investigations, and that those officials had promised to cooperate. “The city of Austin deserves answers,” she said. FOX 7 later reported that Austin police, the Rangers and HSI were expected to investigate, and that ICE was handling an investigation of its own.

The Travis County district attorney’s office went further. It asked to sit as a co-equal partner with Austin police, asked the federal government for the evidence, and said the incident might include violations of state law. That is the part of this story that does not show up in a federal press line. The city still has a penal code. It still has a trauma center. It still has a street it has to reopen.

From Dell Seton Into Federal Custody

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Austin immigration attorney, identified the wounded man as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, from Venezuela. She said he was making a DoorDash run when ICE made contact, that he has lived in Austin about two years, and that his wife, Elizdar, told her he has no criminal history. He called his wife from the car, yelling in pain, to tell her he had been shot.

Elizdar went to Dell Seton. Lincoln-Goldfinch later joined her. Hospital staff told them Garces Perez was not there and asked them to leave the property. Lincoln-Goldfinch said she watched the wife through hours of not knowing, including reports that he was dead, and that all Elizdar wanted was to speak to him.

Watson’s office helped force a call from a hospital attorney. That lawyer said Garces Perez had been released at about 4:30 p.m. into ICE custody. Lincoln-Goldfinch said the family still had no medical details, no location, and no call from him on Sunday night. “His wife is devastated,” she said. “More than anything, she wants to talk to him.”

On paper, that transfer is an immigration detention. On the ground, it is the city’s only living witness leaving a municipal hospital in the custody of the agency whose agent fired. City Hall can demand a file. It cannot order a jailer in a federal chain of command to produce the patient.

What Witnesses and Siegel Saw at the Scene

Mike Siegel, the Austin City Council member whose district includes the overpass, lives six blocks from the shooting. Chief Davis called him. He went to the scene, spoke with witnesses, and looked at the cars himself. He said an ICE Ford Expedition rammed a small Toyota sedan, that an officer got out and fired through the rear passenger window, that at least five shots were fired, and that he saw two bullet holes in that rear glass. A dark blue Toyota Corolla sat under the overpass with a caved passenger door.

Siegel also said federal officers and state police kept local police from doing a crime-scene investigation for several hours. He asked DPS or Austin police to detain the ICE officer so the agent could not leave Texas, as he said has happened after other shootings. Watson, asked whether the city even knew where the agent was, said he did not, and that his hope was that an agent in an officer-involved shooting would not leave the city, and certainly not the state.

Federal law enforcement sources, speaking without a public DHS statement, gave a different frame. They described a targeted ICE operation, a Venezuelan man who they said was in the country without legal status and had a final order of removal, and a man who allegedly fled. They would not say whether he was the intended target. ICE itself issued no on-record account Sunday.

Lincoln-Goldfinch would not confirm his current immigration status. She said he previously held a valid work permit and, based on what her office had, entered the United States lawfully. She said Elizdar’s understanding was that he was in active proceedings, and that the wife did not know about a removal order. Those are not small gaps. They are the whole case for why the stop happened, and they still belong to unnamed sources and a family lawyer, not to an ICE charging document the city can read.

FOUR ACCOUNTS OF THE SAME STOP

More than 100 people gathered at the overpass Sunday evening, banging drums and waving flags after the marked police presence thinned. The street still belonged to Austin. The man did not.

Casar’s Letter Names Houston and Minneapolis

Rep. Greg Casar, the Democrat who represents much of Austin, had warned when ICE began a surge in the city earlier this summer that a stop like this could turn violent. After Sunday’s shooting he sent Homeland Security a demand for an immediate, independent investigation, the public release of complete unedited footage, and a briefing for Congress by September 28.

His letter, addressed to the department and to Acting ICE Director David Venturella, said ICE and Border Patrol agents have shot and killed nearly a dozen people over the last two years, and that DHS has repeatedly lied about violent encounters and blamed the people who were shot. “Any narrative from DHS regarding this shooting must be viewed with deep skepticism,” he wrote. In a separate statement he said, “Over and over, ICE has shot people and then lied about what happened. We can see the lies with our own eyes.”

Texas House Democrats tied Sunday’s round to the July killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, a man they said ICE later acknowledged was not the target of its operation. Casar has also pointed to the Minneapolis shooting of Renee Good, where he said ICE’s public claim that she was trying to hurt officers was disproved by video, and to Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old shot in Texas on March 15, 2025. The letter’s point is not a court finding. It is a demand that Austin not take the first federal story as the last word.

That demand lands harder because of where Garces Perez is. Casar said Monday that ICE had already taken him out of the hospital and into custody, and that deporting him would make the key witness to the shooting disappear.

ICE shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in Austin. He’s been taken out of the hospital and into ICE custody.

If ICE deports him, the key witness to their shooting disappears.

He must not be removed from this country, and he must receive proper medical care. https://t.co/ZMgYHRVwTR

— Congressman Greg Casar (@RepCasar) September 21, 2026

Body Cameras, State Law and Who Holds the Files

Casar asked ICE to suspend the agent and keep him in Austin while the inquiry runs. He asked for every camera, radio channel, phone, vehicle data recorder and Significant Event Notification file from the stop. He asked that DHS not block Texas agencies from releasing what they have. The district attorney’s office, in parallel, reserved the right to treat the shooting as a state crime.

WHAT CASAR ASKED DHS TO HAND OVER

• The agent: Suspend the officer who fired and keep that officer in Austin for the inquiry.
• The footage: Complete, unedited body-worn and dash camera video from every federal and state officer at the scene, released to the public.
• The file: Radio traffic, phones, emails, texts, witness statements, forensic work, vehicle data and incident reports, shared with Austin police, the Rangers and the DHS inspector general.
• The briefing: A report to Congress by September 28 on whether vehicle-stop, use-of-force and warrantless-arrest rules were followed.

Footage is not a side issue. On August 8, Venturella said ICE was on track to put body-worn cameras by the end of August on every officer and agent in the field, ahead of the agency’s original timeline. DHS had already published a privacy review of ICE’s nationwide body-worn camera program for Enforcement and Removal, Homeland Security Investigations and Internal Affairs. Sunday’s shooting came three weeks after that August deadline. If the timeline held, the North Austin stop should have generated video. Casar is now asking to see it. ICE has not said whether this agent was wearing a camera, and it has not released a frame.

The louder argument after the Watson clip was not about EMS times. One camp says a mayor who will not help ICE has no standing to scold a federal agent after a shooting. The other says a wounded man now sitting in ICE custody cannot be the only witness the shooter’s own agency holds. Both arguments treat City Hall as the weak party. That is the accurate part. Austin ran the ambulance. Austin is being asked to certify the facts. Austin does not hold the body, the agent or the file.

DHS Has Until September 28 to Brief Congress

Casar set a clock. DHS and ICE have until September 28 to tell him whether the North Austin operation followed current rules on stops, force and warrantless arrests, and whether evidence was preserved. Watson promised to keep the city informed as more facts arrive. Davis promised to be as transparent as her department can be. Those are local promises. They run out at the edge of a federal detention wing.

Elizdar still had not spoken to her husband on Sunday night. Lincoln-Goldfinch still did not know which ICE facility held him. The Toyota was still sitting under the overpass with two holes in the rear glass, and the agency that fired had not given Austin a public account of why.