Migrant shot by ICE in Austin placed in solitary confinement

Wilber Garcés Pérez cannot be deported for the moment. An immigration judge has temporarily halted his removal from the United States and ordered him to appear next week at his first hearing, his lawyer said.

“It is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, and that means he won’t be deported in the meantime. We have a temporary block to his deportation,” attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, representing the Venezuelan migrant, said in a video on her X account. The order was issued by the judge for the Western District of Texas, Orlando García.

Tuesday morning, the lawyer planned to visit Garcés at a hospital where he had been taken. On Monday night, Lincoln-Goldfinch and Texas members of Congress such as Joaquín Castro reported that the migrant was losing mobility on the left side of his body. But at midnight he was discharged for the second time in two days and returned to the South Texas Processing Center in Pearsall.

So instead of an in-person visit, Garcés and Lincoln-Goldfinch held a videoconference, the lawyer’s spokeswoman Fabiana Meléndez told EL PAÍS. In the call, the Venezuelan said that after participating in Monday’s press conference, detention center staff forcibly took the tablet he used to communicate with the outside world. He was also moved from the Pearsall infirmary — where he had been since Sunday night — to a single cell with a flat, non-reclining bed, before being taken back to the hospital for a time.

On Monday at that second hospital, the lawyer’s spokeswoman said, doctors did speak directly with Garcés about his medical treatment and gave him morphine to relieve pain caused by the bullet still lodged in his body, which fractured his clavicle. However, the lawyer still does not have sufficient medical information about the extent of the damage and the loss of sensation and movement on the left side of the migrant’s body.

Garcés, 28, was driving his blue Toyota Corolla to deliver an order for the DoorDash app on Sunday when immigration agents intercepted him and asked for his documents. He wanted to park his car in a lot instead of leaving it in the street before being detained, but officials would not allow him. That led to a chase that ended with an ICE agent ramming the Venezuelan’s car and then firing multiple shots at him. One bullet lodged in his back, very close to his spine.

Lincoln-Goldfinch alleged on her X account Tuesday that the officer who shot Garcés was not wearing a body-worn camera: “Not surprising,” she added, and although she did not disclose the agent’s name, she said he had been hired by the federal agency last year.

By contrast, on Tuesday the city’s mayor, Kirk Watson, and police chief Lisa Davis showed footage from the body-worn cameras of the Austin Police Department officers who later arrived at the scene.

Students take to the streets

What happened to Garcés also prompted high school students to call a protest for Tuesday. More than 100 left classrooms and gathered on a street northeast of Austin. It was the largest demonstration since Sunday’s protest, which ended when police deployed tear gas.

Velma Sánchez, 41, came with her three children, aged 19, 17 and 14. In one hand she held a flag, like herself, that was half-American and half-Mexican; in the other she held a sign that read “chinga la migra (Fuck ICE).” Although she and her children are U.S. citizens, they attended because they know what it feels like to have a family split apart.

The father of two of her younger children was deported 12 years ago to El Salvador, when they were just babies. One of them had the Salvadoran flag draped over his shoulders.

“They didn’t have time to get to know him,” the mother told EL PAÍS. She says she spent a year in a depression after her husband’s deportation and turned to alcohol. “It’s sad, you feel alone and don’t know what to do [...] But then I got through it for the kids. They had already lost their father; they couldn’t lose their mother too.”

Also in the crowd was Carmen, 17, a junior in high school. Her two brothers were detained by ICE, one in March and the other in June. They remain detained and she has had little news of them. This was her first protest. She came not only for Garcés but also for her brothers.

Further on was Giselle, a 15-year-old U.S. citizen. She wore a T-shirt with the Mexican flag; her family is originally from Mexico. “I came to speak for those who cannot,” she said. One of those people is her own mother, who has chosen to stay locked in the house for fear of being detained. Giselle fears what happened to Garcés could happen to her undocumented friends and to her own family — to anyone, regardless of age.

Sofía, 14, still cannot believe ICE shot a migrant in the back. “It’s not healthy for me to see that they could do that to someone just because of their skin color,” she says.

Her mother could not accompany her to the protest for fear of being detained because she lacks immigration status and was worried police might ask for documents, detain her, and transfer custody to ICE. She gave her daughter money to take a taxi home. “She lives in fear, because ICE has been hiding around the area where we live. She tries not to go out, like my dad.”

In the past, part of her father’s family was deported. Sofía says her parents have been saving in case one of them is detained. Her father has two jobs.

She holds a sign that reads: “Eggs are so expensive because all the chickens are in Congress.” In the absence of elected representatives defending migrants, she says, she and her classmates are stepping up.

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