Newly released surveillance footage shows federal law enforcement vehicles pursuing a car with lights and sirens activated through Austin over the weekend, moments before a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot the driver. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed the footage is authentic.
The video shows at least two vehicles chasing a car driven by Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, a Venezuelan migrant. Garces Perez was shot by an ICE officer during the encounter and was later arrested and placed in detention.
The footage complicates competing accounts of what happened. Garces Perez’s attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, has said officers in an unmarked vehicle tried to run her client off the road while he was working as a DoorDash driver, and that he was chased, sideswiped, shot in the back of the neck, and pulled from his car.
But the surveillance video shows no apparent damage to Garces Perez’s vehicle. Separately, bodycam footage from Austin police officers who responded to the scene shows officers helping Garces Perez out of his car rather than pulling him out, at odds with the attorney’s description of events.
Attorney Says Client Remains Hospitalized
In a Facebook statement posted Wednesday, Lincoln-Goldfinch said her client is being held in isolation in the infirmary of an ICE detention facility, describing him as “gravely ill” with a bullet still in his body.
“Our immediate demands are clear: restore Wilber’s communication privileges and take him back to the hospital. He needs access to appropriate medical care,” Lincoln-Goldfinch wrote.
Lawmaker Presses for Evidence
The shooting has become a flashpoint for Democratic criticism of ICE’s operations in Texas. Some critics have described the agency as “rogue” and accused it of “terrorizing our cities and threatening the safety of our residents.”
U.S. Representative Greg Casar, D-Texas, visited the ICE detention center on Wednesday to meet with Garces Perez. In a video posted to X, Casar criticized the agency’s handling of the case.
“ICE has been trying to blame all of this on him without releasing any of the video footage, any of the evidence,” Casar said.
The competing accounts, and the physical evidence that has since emerged, leave unresolved questions about exactly what transpired before the shooting, including whether Garces Perez’s vehicle was struck and how he was removed from his car.
