Body-camera footage gaps, conflicting accounts detailed in affidavit
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan food delivery driver, with one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer nine days after an ICE agent shot him in Austin, Texas. According to a criminal complaint filed in the western district of Texas, Garcés Pérez is accused of striking the officer with his vehicle’s side mirror while attempting to drive away during the 20 September traffic stop. The shooting has drawn protests and criticism from Democrats over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.
The assault allegation fits a pattern in which federal prosecutors have brought similar charges against people shot by immigration officers during President Donald Trump’s second term, with both of those cases ending in dropped charges. Garcés Pérez, who still has a bullet lodged in his back from the shooting, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Garcés Pérez made his initial court appearance in Austin federal court on Tuesday, according to the US attorney’s office in the western district of Texas. An attorney for Garcés Pérez declined to immediately comment on Tuesday. A DHS spokesperson referred questions to the Department of Justice.
Garcés Pérez is in US Marshals Service custody after being removed from a federal detention center in South Texas, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors. Separately, his attorneys have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop his removal from the United States.
The criminal complaint is based on a nine-page affidavit from a Department of Homeland Security agent — the government’s fullest public account of the shooting to date. The document includes screenshots from body-worn camera footage but no video was released, and the complaint did not state whether the officer allegedly struck by the side mirror sustained any injuries.
The accusations against Garcés Pérez resemble claims that immigration agents have made in other high-profile shootings, in which officers have accused drivers of using their vehicles as weapons. In a handful of those cases, the allegations have been undermined or retracted after the release of body-worn camera footage, and the pattern has renewed scrutiny of the DHS’s reliance on vehicular stops to execute arrests.
According to the agents’ account in the affidavit, officers first observed Garcés Pérez’s car parked outside a restaurant with its emergency flashers on. A database check showed the car was registered to Garcés Pérez, who had a final order of removal from the United States. The agents said they activated their lights to execute a stop.
Garcés Pérez’s account to federal investigators, also included in the affidavit, describes a different sequence of events. He told investigators that an unmarked SUV followed him and abruptly cut him off on the side of the road. He provided his driver’s license through a crack in the window but declined to exit because he had asked officers to wait until his wife could retrieve his car, according to the affidavit. Court documents describe the initial interaction as “pleasant and not aggressive.”
About a minute later, Garcés Pérez “abruptly” closed the window and drove off, according to court records. One of the officers, identified only by his initials, was struck in his torso with the driver’s side view mirror when Garcés Pérez tried to drive away, the documents say.
Garcés Pérez told investigators that a law enforcement SUV struck his car after a brief chase and caused it to spin before an agent opened fire, shooting him in the back. US attorney Justin R. Simmons said in a statement that Garcés Pérez tried to strike an officer with his car, “causing the officer to fire his pistol.”
The unnamed officer who shot Garcés Pérez was not wearing a body camera, according to the affidavit. The other officer involved in the chase was wearing a camera but did not catch up until after Garcés Pérez had been shot. ICE had previously said its field officers nationwide would have body-worn cameras by the end of September.
The Austin police department released video from its own officers last week, but that footage did not show the shooting or the moment Garcés Pérez allegedly tried to drive away. The affidavit includes three screenshots from previously unreleased body-worn camera footage of the officer’s initial interactions: the first appears to show the officer standing in front of Garcés Pérez’s driver-side mirror; the second shows the officer resting his hands on the hood and side of the car with the mirror close to or touching his abdomen; and the third shows the car pulling away.
Garcés Pérez entered the United States in 2024 using CBP One, an asylum-appointment program begun under President Joe Biden that Trump ended on his first day in office. His attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, has said he was an asylum seeker with a valid work permit, and that a judge issued a deportation order after he missed an immigration court hearing because the notice was sent to a former address. Garcés Pérez was making a DoorDash delivery at the time of the stop.
The shooting occurred amid a surge in ICE enforcement during Trump’s second term. ICE reported more than 50,000 monthly arrests in July and August — a first for the agency. Immigration officers have come under intense scrutiny for shootings that have occurred since Trump took office in January 2025, at least 10 of which have been fatal.
Federal prosecutors have brought assault charges against other people shot by immigration officers in recent months. In two earlier cases — a woman shot several times by border patrol officers in Chicago and a man shot in the leg by an ICE agent in Minneapolis — the charges were later dropped. The ICE officer in Minneapolis has since been charged with lying about getting assaulted before shooting the man in the leg.