A shooting involving a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin, Texas has ignited public outrage, drawn hundreds of protesters to the streets, and intensified long-simmering tensions over the Trump administration’s aggressive second-term immigration enforcement policies.
The incident unfolded shortly before 1 p.m. local time on Sunday, when ICE agent opened fire on 28-year-old Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, striking him in the torso. Garces Perez was rushed to a local hospital for treatment, and was confirmed to be in ICE custody by his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. According to Lincoln-Goldfinch, Garces Perez managed to call his wife from the hospital while screaming in pain from his injury. As of Monday, few additional details about the shooting have been released, and local officials have not been able to confirm whether Garces Perez was an intended target of ICE operations at the time of the incident.
Local authorities and elected leaders have swiftly called for a full independent probe into the shooting, citing growing community distrust of federal immigration practices. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat, emphasized in a Sunday media briefing that local residents have both a right to transparency and a right to feel secure in their neighborhoods. “They should know the truth,” Watson stated, adding that he welcomed the city’s formal involvement in the investigation. The mayor also confirmed that ICE enforcement operations have increased sharply across Austin in recent weeks. U.S. Representative Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, joined the call for action, demanding an immediate independent investigation, the public release of all body camera footage from the incident, and legal accountability for any ICE officer found to have violated the law. The Austin Police Department has confirmed that none of its officers were involved in the shooting.
Within hours of the shooting, dozens of demonstrators gathered at the scene to protest ICE’s expanding presence in the city. Many carried signs calling for ICE to withdraw from Austin, and several waved national flags of Mexico and Guatemala, two of the largest source countries for migrants in Texas. Local media footage captured protesters gathering across the street from a blue Toyota Corolla that sustained visible damage to its passenger-side door, with uniformed ICE agents standing guard nearby. This shooting marks the second high-profile fatal or injurious shooting involving ICE in Texas in just months: back earlier this year, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston resident who was not the target of the agency’s investigation, during a routine traffic stop, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records.
The incident comes as the Trump administration’s second-term immigration crackdown has sparked widespread unrest across multiple U.S. cities. The administration has defended its strict enforcement policies and controversial ICE tactics as critical to protecting public safety and fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations. However, immigrant rights advocates have accused the administration of violating fundamental due process and free speech rights, and congressional Democrats have pushed for sweeping ICE reforms, including mandatory body cameras for all agents and a ban on agents concealing their identities during enforcement operations.
This Austin shooting also follows a rare federal action against an ICE agent earlier this month: the U.S. Department of Justice charged an agent with lying about a 2025 non-fatal shooting of another Venezuelan migrant in Minnesota, one of the few times the current Justice Department has brought criminal charges against a federal law enforcement officer for on-duty conduct. Even some within the Republican Party have pushed back against the administration’s hardline tactics. Florida Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who has publicly criticized the mass crackdown, recently released a campaign ad condemning the targeting and detention of migrants with no criminal history. Appearing on CBS’s *Face the Nation* on Sunday, Salazar said she had spoken directly with President Trump about her concerns, and that she believes he will keep U.S. immigration policy on the right track. “He gets it more than anybody,” she said.
The BBC has reached out to both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for comment on the Austin shooting, as of this reporting no formal statement has been issued by either federal agency.