An ICE agent shot an unarmed food delivery driver in Austin on Sunday. Video of the shooting does not match what police first told the public.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez is 28 years old. He is from Venezuela. He was working for DoorDash on Sunday, September 20. He wanted to earn extra money for his family.

Garces Perez was driving on Anderson Lane in north Austin around 12:30 p.m. An unmarked black SUV pulled up next to his blue Toyota Corolla and hit it. He thought it was just an aggressive driver. He did not know it was ICE agents. The agents did not turn on their emergency lights. They waited until after they hit his car, he said.

Then he realized who they were. Garces Perez asked the agents to let him pull over. He wanted to stop safely so they could detain him. Instead, the SUV hit his car again.

Garces Perez made a U-turn under a highway overpass to find a place to stop. The SUV kept chasing him. It rammed his Corolla again. The crash caused heavy damage to his car.

Video recorded at the scene shows what happened next. The damaged Corolla stops under the highway, facing the SUV. An agent gets out. He walks around the SUV and toward the driver's side of his car. Within seconds, the agent fires what sounds like at least three shots.

The video does not show Garces Perez attacking the agent. It does not show him running away on foot either. His Corolla rolls forward only a few feet before it stops for good.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis told reporters the agent fired after a "small foot pursuit." The video recorded at the scene does not show that happening.

Attorney Kate Lincoln Goldfinch represents Garces Perez. She translated his account at a Monday press conference. She said Garces Perez "asked the ICE officer if he could please at least pull over first so they could detain him."

Garces Perez described what happened after he was shot. "After I was shot, one of the officers got into my car and forcibly turned it off," he said. "I told him I was in a lot of pain and I thought I was going to pass out."

Austin police officers handcuffed Garces Perez at the scene. They cut off his shirt so medics could treat him. He was taken to Dell Seton Medical Center. He had a gunshot wound to his upper back.

Lincoln Goldfinch said Garces Perez's wife got a call from him around 12:30 p.m. "At 12:30 she received a call from him shouting he had been shot and he was in pain, and then the call cut off," Lincoln Goldfinch said. "She knew nothing else."

His wife rushed to the hospital. Guards told her and Lincoln Goldfinch he was not there. Then they said he had been there earlier. Then they told the two women to leave the parking lot. They waited across the street for hours. Rumors spread that Garces Perez had died.

About four hours after he got to the hospital, they let Garces Perez go. He went straight into federal custody. Neither the hospital nor ICE told his wife or his lawyer where he went.

Lincoln Goldfinch and his wife finally found him around 10 a.m. Monday. ICE had driven him about 130 miles southwest of Austin. He was now at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

Garces Perez told his lawyer that doctors left the bullet lodged near his spine. He said he got no pain medicine before they moved him. He arrived at the Pearsall center around 4 a.m. Agents put him in a cold room with no bed. Then they questioned him.

"I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound," Garces Perez said. "I have not received the medical care and attention that I require."

Lincoln Goldfinch spoke with him Monday morning. She said he was still in bad pain and still bleeding. "He told me this morning when I spoke to him he was actively bleeding," she said. "I don't know if he has a dressing, like a bandage. We know that the bullet is still lodged in his back."

Garces Perez entered the United States legally in 2024. He came in through CBP One. That is a federal app for setting up border crossings. He had a valid work permit. He had also asked for asylum. Lincoln Goldfinch said he came to earn money for his son. The boy is disabled. He still lives back home in Venezuela.

Austin police plan to look into the shooting. So do the Texas Rangers and federal agents. The Travis County District Attorney's office asked for a full seat in that probe too. Prosecutors want access to the evidence. They said the shooting could break state law.

This is not the first ICE shooting in Texas this year. ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston in July 2026. They also killed American citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island in March 2025.

El Tejano will keep following this case as it moves forward.