ICE shoots Austin man during traffic stop the same day
Evanston police said officers were called to an argument between two men just before 10 a.m. Sunday and arrived to find a man on the ground with injuries to his head, neck, and teeth, surrounded by several people who were assisting him.
Officers questioned a man in one of two SUVs at the scene who was wearing plainclothes and a vest with the word “police” on it. That person identified himself as a federal agent conducting a fugitive investigation, the police statement said.
The agent told officers that five federal agents had been operating in the area in separate unmarked vehicles and that they had a warrant for the arrest of a person with a Chicago address. He said the agents had attempted to identify an individual who resembled the person they were seeking, that the individual refused to provide identification, was detained for fingerprinting, and resisted detention.
Agents later determined the man was not the person they were seeking and learned he was a US citizen. He was released, the statement said.
An officer observed blood on the agent’s hands. The agent said he was injured while attempting to handcuff the individual. The police statement did not specify which federal agency the agent represented, but witnesses told police they believed the individuals attempting to detain the man were ICE agents.
The agent told officers the federal agents left the area after protesters began to gather because they feared they would be attacked, according to the statement.
Officers later contacted the wrongly detained person, an adult Evanston resident, at a hospital and photographed and documented his injuries, police said. The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Evanston incident unfolded the same day that ICE shot and seriously wounded a man in Austin, Texas, the Guardian reported. The shooting followed a traffic stop in the city’s north side, and a lawyer for the victim said the man was making a DoorDash delivery when he was shot. The 28-year-old Venezuelan man remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition Sunday night, the Guardian reported.
Austin’s Democratic mayor, Kirk Watson, said he wanted the city’s police department involved in the investigation to provide “clear, third-party eyes.”
The two Sunday episodes come amid increasing scrutiny of ICE’s enforcement tactics under the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations. A record 50,000 people were arrested in July, more than half of whom had no criminal record despite the administration’s pledge to target dangerous criminals, according to the Deportation Data Project.
In July, an ICE officer fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of Houston after federal agents driving unmarked vehicles pursued him while he was taking his construction crew to a job site. Among others fatally shot by federal agents under the Trump administration were US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January in Minneapolis.