Wilber Garces Perez, the man who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in North Austin last month, underwent surgery on Thursday.
His lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said he is now recovering and has spoken to his family.
According to a press release sent out on behalf of Lincoln-Goldfinch and Daniel Woodward of the Texas Civil Rights Project, ICE would not grant Garces Perez’s wife access to the operating room.
He was shot on Sept. 20, after fleeing from a traffic stop, court documents show. As of Thursday, he had a bullet lodged in his back for about 11 days.
“This is a public safety issue,” the lawyers’ statement said. “Federal agents cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. We’re seeing agents run plates, make high-risk stops of people with no criminal record, and fail to wear or activate the cameras meant to hold them accountable.”
The officer who shot Garces Perez, who is a Venezuelan national, was not wearing a body camera, according to Rick Bazan, a Department of Homeland Security special agent who testified in court on Wednesday. The other officer involved had turned off his body camera prior to arriving at the scene.
See here for the previous update. I would still like to know what happened at the hospital and why it took so long for him to get proper treatment. Any followup investigation to this situation needs to address those questions.
Garces Perez remains in custody, though thankfully not at an ICE detention center.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez faces one criminal charge in connection with his actions leading up to that shooting — assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer. He arrived at the Austin federal courtroom in a wheelchair, with his left arm in a sling, surrounded by three United States Marshals. Garces Perez remained stoic throughout the nearly three-hour hearing, which he heard through headphones, as an interpreter translated the proceeding for him.
During Wednesday’s hearing, a judge heard testimony from the lead investigator, Special Agent Rick Bazan, on the criminal case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office used what he said, body-worn camera video and security footage of the pursuit captured by a north Austin business to prove both probable cause for the criminal charge and that Garces Perez should be held as the case moves forward.
Bazan testified the agents found Garces Perez’s vehicle that Sunday afternoon at a restaurant in north Austin’s Village Shopping Center. He told the judge, “They do random checks on vehicles at random places…. They’re out there everywhere running license plates.” He called it “a common everyday occurrence” for the agents who are Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers.
Bazan also revealed the plan the two put together after running Garces Perez’s license plate, learning he had a Final Order of Removal, and believing it was actually him in the car. He explained they decided to wait until Garces Perez left the restaurant and got into his car to arrest him away from the business. Bazan told the judge the two “didn’t want to risk him running into the restaurant.”
Immigration attorneys and advocates, clergy, and reporters filled the courtroom Wednesday for the hearing. The U.S. Attorney’s Office showed the court the full body-worn camera footage captured by the one responding agent who wore the equipment during the stop. The government centered on the conversation Garces Perez had with the agents in Spanish, in which he asked to move his car so his wife could come get it. In the video, the agent repeatedly tells Garces Perez to get out of the car, and he will take care of moving it. Instead, Garces Perez rolls up his window and drives away from the location of the stop. Bazan told the judge Garces Perez hit the agent, who would later shoot him, with the driver’s side-view mirror.
Garces Perez’s criminal defense attorney, Shane McMahon, later argued the video did not show the mirror hit the agent. He also questioned Bazan on whether he interviewed the agent who ultimately shot his client. Bazan told the court he did not.
What remains unclear is why the agent ended up shooting Garces Perez. Bazan testified that his interview with the other responding agent revealed he received a call from his partner stating Garces Perez tried to hit him with his car and he fired his gun. McMahon asked if that attempted hit was referring to the side-view mirror allegedly hitting the agent’s torso, or if something else happened right before shots were fired.
The judge ruled Wednesday afternoon that the government did prove probable cause, so the criminal case against Garces Perez will move forward. He also said Garces Perez will remain detained because he is a flight risk. The judge pointed out that the government did not prove he was a danger to the community.
The camera question is a little confusing, but this NBC News story provides some clarification.
The defense called the charges against Garcés Pérez “retaliation” and argued that the video was inconclusive because it didn’t fully capture the moment when he allegedly tried to flee.
The hearing also included testimony from Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Rick Bazan, who signed the criminal complaint charging Garcés Pérez with assault. The defense argued that Bazan, whose agency is the investigative arm of ICE, could not confirm whether the ICE agent was actually hit by the car mirror since no federal investigators interviewed the agent directly. Bazan also couldn’t explain why the officer allegedly struck by the mirror was not wearing a body-worn camera.
Video provided Wednesday in court shows officers pulling Garcés Pérez over Sept. 20 in Austin, where he was making deliveries for DoorDash.
The video showed Garcés Pérez giving officers his driver’s license through a crack in his window and then asking in Spanish if he can park his car so that a relative could come retrieve it. The officer demanded Garcés Pérez get out of the car multiple times, to which he asked if he could park his own car so a family member could come retrieve it. After some back-and-forth, Garcés Pérez abruptly and rapidly drives off.
Prosecutors presented a video from cameras at a nearby business showing the ensuing high-speed chase through residential streets. The shooting itself was not captured on the video shared in court.
The federal officer who shot Garcés Pérez wasn’t wearing a body-worn camera. The immigration officer who did have a camera was driving in a separate car and turned the camera off during the pursuit.
Garcés Pérez said he was struck by a law enforcement SUV and spun around before he was shot. Federal officers told investigators, however, that Garcés Pérez attempted to strike an officer with his car at the end of the chase before the unidentified officer fired his weapon.
The accusations against Garcés Pérez recall previous claims made by immigration agents after other high-profile shootings similarly accusing drivers of weaponizing their vehicles. In a handful of cases, the allegations have been undermined or walked back after the release of body-worn camera video, drawing renewed scrutiny about the DHS’s reliance on vehicular stops to execute arrests.
Again, on this blog we do not take anything ICE or DHS says at face value. The history of their false claims, which fall apart as soon as the evidence comes to light, speaks for itself.