ICE shot a delivery driver in Austin and treated him as disposable
By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso ·
An ICE officer shot an unarmed DoorDash driver in Austin, exposing how local leaders welcomed the very state security apparatus that now treats human lives as disposable.
A DoorDash delivery on Austin streets ends in an ambush and a bullet in the spine
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez came from Venezuela in 2024 using the CBP One app to seek asylum. On a Sunday afternoon, he was making a DoorDash delivery on the streets of Austin, Texas. An unmarked car sideswiped him. When he tried to pull over, agents ran into him and shot him in the back. As FOX 7 Austin reported, witness Nedavia Bolanos captured video showing Perez in the driver's seat. Officers later cut his shirt on the ground to treat a bullet hole near the back of his neck.
The federal machinery did not stop at the gunshot. Instead of receiving emergency surgery, Wilber was whisked away in secret. As ABC News reported, officers took him to the Pearsall detention facility, 130 miles from Austin, around four in the morning on Monday. CBS News reported that a bullet remains in his back because it is lodged close to his spine. Hospital guards repeatedly lied to his wife and his lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, telling them he was not there. When his family finally found him at the South Texas Processing Center, he was sleeping on the floor of a cold room with no bed. Guards denied him pain medication. He told his lawyer that he was not receiving the medical attention he required.
This is the Family separation policy of our interior streets. The state uses administrative cruelty and dehumanization to punish migrants, treating their bodies as disposable tools for deterrence just as it did when it tore babies from their mothers' arms at the border. Federal agents act like an occupying army. They shoot first and hide behind closed doors while barring city police from the crime scene. Councilmember Mike Siegel noted that ICE and state police entirely controlled the scene, refusing to permit city police to conduct an investigation.
The security state hides behind closed doors while mayors express shock over the violence they invited
The Department of Homeland Security wants us to buy their bureaucratic cover story. DHS initially lied to the public by claiming there was a foot chase. That falsehood collapsed because Wilber never left his driver's seat until officers pulled him out. ABC News noted that DHS stated the shooting happened during a law enforcement operation targeting an illegal alien with a final removal order. But as U.S. Rep. Greg Casar pointed out, Wilber has no criminal record. Federal data shows immigration arrests of people without criminal records reached a record high in July.
Mayor Kirk Watson stated he was very angry and extremely disappointed that ICE shot a person on the streets of Austin. He added that given the rogue nature of the agency, there is no reason to be surprised. Mayor Watson previously invited state troopers into Austin in 2023. He rolled out the welcome mat for the very state-level security apparatus that now coordinates with federal agencies to shield rogue shooters from local accountability. You cannot invite armed state patrols into your neighborhoods to crack down on ordinary people and then act shocked when federal agents shoot delivery drivers in the back.
The Department of Homeland Security claims its officers are simply enforcing the law against individuals with final removal orders under emergency conditions. Under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, DHS issued a Finding of Mass Influx of Aliens extending emergency authorities across all fifty states and claiming hundreds of assaults on ERO officers. This defense collapses under basic human decency. A civil immigration order is not a death sentence. A deportation notice sent to an old address does not give federal agents the right to ram an unarmed delivery driver's car and lodge a bullet near his spine.
The fight for our streets requires more than empty outrage from politicians who look away
We have seen this script before. The border is not just a geographic line in the dirt anymore; it has been imported into every neighborhood, every workplace, and every delivery route in Texas.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch stated that the public deserves more than an agency's account of a shooting. She stressed that ICE traffic stops must end because too many encounters result in violence and desperate searches for loved ones. The Travis County District Attorney's office requested co-equal partnership in the investigation, noting that violations of state law may have occurred. Yet federal authorities continue to stonewall under a security state that has systematically shuttered internal civil rights oversight.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez is lying in a cold room in Pearsall with a bullet near his spine because an immigration officer treated his life as worthless. Mayor Watson, Congressman Casar, and every local official demanding answers must understand that polite resolutions will not stop an agency that operates above the law. ICE must get out of Austin. Our communities must refuse all local collaboration with federal immigration raids. The officers responsible for this shooting must face criminal prosecution in a state court.