Source : Perth Now news
A Venezuelan man shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is in custody at an ICE detention centre in Texas after being released from hospital with a bullet still lodged in his back.
Speaking by phone during a news conference, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez said doctors didn’t remove the bullet because it’s near his spine.
He said ICE pressed for him to be released quickly so it could move him to a detention centre.
He said he had received no pain medication and had slept on the floor, before eventually being given a “pill” by a nurse.
Perez, 28, was making a DoorDash delivery in Austin on Sunday when his car was “sideswiped” twice by ICE officers in an unmarked truck, immigration lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch told reporters.
He was taken to hospital but released later on Sunday into ICE custody with the bullet still inside him.
Perez said ICE officers didn’t ask him to stop or turn on any flashing lights until after they had sideswiped him.
He said he did a U-turn and was trying to park when the officers rammed his car and shot him in the back of the neck.
“I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound, and I have not received the medical attention that I require,” Perez said.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said Perez told her he was being interrogated.
The Department of Homeland Security said it was investigating the shooting of a Venezuelan man in the US illegally who “had a final order of removal”.
Perez entered the US legally in 2024 after using CBP One, a program begun under President Joe Biden that set up appointments with US authorities to be considered for asylum, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. President Donald Trump ended the program on his first day in office.
Perez’s lawyers said he was an asylum seeker and had a valid work permit.
Lincoln-Goldfinch said a judge issued a deportation order for Perez after he missed a hearing in immigration court because the hearing notice was sent to a former address.
“Not that being out of status would justify any of this at all,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
The shooting occurred amid a surge in ICE enforcement across the US during Trump’s second term. During the summer, it reported more than 50,000 monthly arrests in July and August – a first for the agency.
