Immigrant shot by ICE in Austin is charged with assault

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 that officer and another on what was described as a high-speed pursuit.

The first 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 had attempted to strike the officer with his car, “causing the officer to fire his pistol,” the Justice Department said in a news release.

Garcés could face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted, authorities said. A detention hearing is scheduled for Friday.

The government’s account of the shooting contradicts the initial public accounts provided by Garcés and his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, who said last week that the ICE officers had not activated their law enforcement lights before ramming his car. They said he thought it was an aggressive driver and attempted to pull over but did not lead the officers on a vehicle pursuit before being shot.

However, video clips of the encounter indicate that Garcés drove away after he was initially stopped by officers. The officers asked Garcés “to place the car in park and step out,” according to the affidavit. He ignored the request and about one minute later “abruptly closed the window and drove off.”

A day after the shooting, while in custody in an immigration detention facility, Garcés used a tablet computer to call into a news conference arranged by his attorney and told reporters that he had been briefly hospitalized and then sent to the ICE detention facility with a 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.

L.G. was a relatively new officer who had previously worked at another federal law enforcement agency and joined ICE during the Department of Homeland Security’s hiring spree last year, the Washington Post has reported.

DHS has faced mounting criticism from former officials who say the recruits were put into active duty before being adequately vetted and trained. In recent months, the agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits over poor performance or red flags that some former officials said should have been identified earlier.

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.

In several instances, federal judges have dismissed charges against people who were arrested or shot by immigration officers, including Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen who was injured in Chicago last year, after evidence emerged that contradicted the government’s accusations.

ICE acting director David Venturella said over the summer that body cameras would be disseminated to every officer by the end of August following the fatal shootings in Houston and Maine by officers who did not have cameras recording when they fired their weapons. One of those officers was a recruit who had a volatile history, according to relatives and court records.

An agency spokesperson told the Post in late August that DHS had enough body cameras to equip all ICE officers nationwide. But in early September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a news conference that the cameras had not yet been fully distributed and that only officers assigned to make arrests in the field would be given the devices.

It was unclear why the officer in Garcés’ shooting was not wearing a body camera.