Feds Charge Illegal Immigrant Shot By ICE

Federal prosecutors on Monday charged an illegal alien who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez, 28, was charged with one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer after he allegedly struck an officer with his car’s side-view mirror while fleeing.

On September 20, ICE officers in Austin, Texas, pulled over Garces-Perez after determining that he had a deportation order, according to court documents.

Garces-Perez gave the officers his driver’s license, which they used to verify his identity, court documents alleged. The officers asked Garces-Perez to put his car in park and to exit the vehicle, but he allegedly ignored the orders.

After about a minute of conversation in Spanish, Garces-Perez “abruptly closed the window and drove off,” striking an ICE officer in the torso with the driver’s side-view mirror, according to the Justice Department. The complaint confirms the officer who shot Garces-Perez did not have a body camera.

Garces-Perez led officers on a high-speed vehicle chase, according to the court documents.

During the chase, one officer lost sight of his partner and Garces-Perez. Minutes later, the partner called and said Garces-Perez had tried to hit him with his car and that he had fired his pistol, according to the complaint.

Following the shooting, anti-ICE protesters took to the streets of Austin decrying the incident as an unprovoked attack.

Gates-Perez said ICE detained him with a bullet still lodged near his spine, according to The Texas Tribune. He said medical staff told him they would not remove the bullet because of its proximity to his spine.

Garces-Perez, who called into a news conference from detention, said an unmarked SUV sideswiped him twice before he realized that ICE officers were attempting to pull him over. The Venezuelan national claimed that he made a U-turn under a freeway underpass when the SUV struck his car and that only then did the unmarked SUVs turn on their emergency lights and sirens.

The illegal immigrant failed to appear for an earlier immigration hearing where a judge ordered his deportation, according to The Texas Tribune. Garces-Perez’s immigration lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, claimed it was because the immigration court sent the summons to a previous address.

“I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 20 years, doing removal defense cases, like thousands of cases in the immigration court system. This is a very common outcome that the immigration court does not properly update people’s addresses,” she said. “The person doesn’t arrive, and they order them deported in absentia. I would say, maybe daily in my law practice, we see this happen.”

Garces-Perez could face up to two decades behind bars if he is convicted.