Key Takeaways
- Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot by an ICE agent Sunday, was moved back to a hospital Monday evening after losing feeling on the left side of his body
- The dispute over his immigration status has narrowed: both his attorney and the Department of Homeland Security now agree a removal order exists. What's still contested is whether his original entry into the country was lawful.
- A second protest reached the Texas Capitol Monday night, but the arrests reported that weekend happened during Sunday's demonstration at the shooting scene.
- Investigators still can't agree on the basic sequence of the shooting: a possible foot pursuit, a car-ramming allegation, and even the number of shots fired all remain disputed.
- U.S. Rep. Greg Casar has given federal officials until September 28 to brief Congress and release body-camera footage; as of Tuesday, DHS has not publicly responded to either demand.
Back in the Hospital, Not the Detention Cell
On Monday evening, immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Garcés Pérez had been moved to a hospital a second time — not because ICE had agreed to remove the bullet lodged near his spine, but because he had begun losing feeling down the left side of his body, raising concern he could be facing partial paralysis. The development came after a staffer for U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro visited the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall and found him in severe pain.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said a fellow detainee later told her that officers had handcuffed Garcés Pérez, shackled his feet and placed him in a waist chain before he was taken out of the facility. Before that transfer, he had arrived at Pearsall — more than 100 miles from Austin — in the early hours of Monday morning, and said he'd been given no pain medication and no bed in a facility he described as freezing cold.
Speaking From Detention, He Described the Pain
Speaking by phone through a translator during Monday's press conference — before the reported hospital transfer — Garcés Pérez said in Spanish that he was "not doing well due to the gunshot wound." He explained that doctors had left the bullet in place because removing it risked damaging his spine.
The Removal Order Is No Longer in Dispute. His Entry Still Is.
DHS has maintained since Sunday night that Garcés Pérez is in the country unlawfully, that he entered under the Biden administration and carries a final order of removal. A senior administration official separately confirmed he has no criminal record beyond his immigration status — a point his own side no longer disputes.
Lincoln-Goldfinch's account has moved toward that same paper trail, even as she disputes what it means. She has detailed how her client held a valid work permit while pursuing asylum, but missed an immigration court hearing because the notice was mailed to an address he had already moved from, triggering a deportation order issued in his absence. Both DHS and his attorney are now describing essentially the same sequence of paperwork.
What remains genuinely contested is how Garcés Pérez arrived in the U.S. in the first place. His attorney maintains he entered the country legally in 2024, seeking asylum, through the Biden-era appointment system that let migrants book official border crossings — a program the current administration shut down on its first day in office. DHS's version calls that same entry illegal. Neither side has produced documentation settling the question publicly.
What Actually Happened During the Stop Is Still Unsettled
Homeland Security Investigations — a branch of ICE itself — is leading the inquiry into its own agent's shooting, with the FBI assisting, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News, a structure that hands the lead role to the agency under scrutiny rather than to the FBI, which typically takes charge of shootings with possible civil-rights implications.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Sunday that preliminary information pointed to a brief foot pursuit, but cautioned she hadn't yet been briefed by federal partners. Lincoln-Goldfinch rejects that account outright: "There was not a foot chase as they said that there was," she told CNN.
Garcés Pérez's own version, relayed through his attorney, is that an unmarked SUV sideswiped his car twice before he was shot while trying to find a place to pull over. Austin City Council member Mike Siegel, who went to the scene, said an ICE vehicle rammed the car and an agent then got out and fired at least five times. Video independently verified by NBC News, by contrast, captured only three audible gunshots. Even the basic mechanics of the shooting, in other words, haven't been settled.
From a Roadside Vigil to the Capitol Steps
Sunday's demonstration at the shooting scene didn't stay calm. Austin police said officers used chemical irritants to disperse a crowd that had grown into the hundreds by early evening, after some protesters threw rocks, bottles and pieces of concrete, damaging three patrol vehicles. Demonstrators regrouped and blocked the intersection with construction materials; state troopers moved back in later that night, firing pepper balls after repeated orders to disperse. Between Austin police and state troopers, four people were arrested that night.
By Monday morning, work crews were already painting over anti-ICE graffiti at the scene, even as a memorial of candles, flowers and hand-lettered signs kept growing along the same stretch of road.
That evening, the demonstration shifted several miles south to the Texas Capitol, where a crowd that grew past 100 people by 8 p.m. — closer to 150, by one local station's count — gathered under a heavy police presence. Unlike Sunday, this rally stayed peaceful, dispersing on its own around 9 p.m. with no arrests reported at the Capitol itself — a distinction some early coverage blurred by attributing Sunday's arrest total to Monday's rally.
Elected Officials Keep Pressing DHS for Footage
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar's letter to DHS is still pending a response. He is demanding the agency preserve all evidence, publicly release complete body- and dash-camera footage, and brief him and his congressional colleagues by September 28. As of Tuesday, DHS had not publicly committed to either request.
Fear Spreads Through Nearby Businesses
A few blocks from the shooting site, the outdoor tables at a restaurant serving Latin American food sat empty Monday afternoon. A worker there said customers were staying away out of fear of both police and ICE — one sign, local organizers say, of a sharp rise in immigration arrests around Austin that predates Sunday's shooting by weeks.
