A federal immigration officer shot and wounded a Venezuelan national in North Austin on Sunday afternoon, and by Monday the story had split into two versions that barely resemble each other. The Department of Homeland Security says the man, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, had a final order of removal and had been in the country illegally since entering under the Biden administration. Much of the national coverage that followed led with something else: a DoorDash driver, shot mid-delivery, now recovering with a bullet still lodged in him.

What Happened on West Anderson Lane

Austin-Travis County EMS said crews were called to the 7000 block of West Anderson Lane, near Research Boulevard and U.S. 183, just before 1 p.m. Sunday. Paramedics arrived within about three and a half minutes and found an adult man with a gunshot wound; he was taken to a local trauma center in serious but stable condition roughly nine minutes later, according to EMS Chief Rob Luckritz, as reported by FOX 7 Austin.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis confirmed the shooting involved a federal agent, later identified as ICE, and said her department was not involved beyond blocking roads and directing traffic. She said she had heard the operation may have included a brief foot pursuit but called that detail preliminary. Federal law enforcement sources separately told CBS News that ICE officers were running license plate checks as part of a targeted enforcement operation when they came across a vehicle registered to Garces Perez.

DHS's Account: An Illegal Alien With a Final Removal Order

Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's investigative arm, is leading the inquiry with help from the FBI. DHS put its position in writing the same day: "Homeland Security Investigations, with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is leading the investigation into the officer involved shooting of an illegal alien from Venezuela, who illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order of removal, during a law enforcement operation today in Austin, TX."

That statement, quoted by NPR and The Hill, means an immigration judge had already ordered Garces Perez deported and that his appeals, if he filed any, had run out. DHS added that his condition was stable and that he was in federal custody pending removal.

Garces Perez's Account: A Sideswipe, Then Shots From Behind

Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, who says she represents Garces Perez and his family, gives a different sequence of events. She told reporters he was driving for DoorDash on Sunday when an unmarked car sideswiped him and he did not realize it belonged to federal agents. He made a U-turn under the highway, was sideswiped a second time, and was then shot from behind before agents pulled him from his car, according to her account relayed by FOX 7 Austin.

Lincoln-Goldfinch says there was no foot chase. ICE's own account, through DHS and federal sources, says there was. Separately, NewsNation reported that federal sources described Garces Perez fleeing officers before the shooting, a detail his attorney disputes.

Garces Perez's wife's search for him added its own confusion to the day. Lincoln-Goldfinch said the wife got a call from her husband around 12:30 p.m. saying he had been shot, then the line went dead. Hospital staff at Dell Seton Medical Center told her and the wife he was not a patient there, and it took roughly four hours and Mayor Kirk Watson's personal intervention before they learned he had already been released to an ICE facility, where he reportedly slept on the floor with the bullet still in him.

What National Headlines Emphasized, and What They Didn't

Reading the coverage side by side is where the real gap shows up. NPR's own headline, "Federal immigration agent shoots and injures man in Austin, Texas," never mentions the removal order or his immigration status at all. The story's lead paragraph puts DHS's description of Garces Perez as "an illegal alien from Venezuela" inside quotation marks, treating it as a disputed characterization rather than a documented immigration-court fact, and the phrase "final order of removal" does not appear anywhere in NPR's article.

NBC News ran with "ICE officer shoots Venezuelan man delivering food in Austin, lawyer says." CNN's coverage centered on the bullet still lodged in his back and the family's difficulty locating him. None of that reporting is fabricated, the details about the hospital and the missing hours are well documented, but a reader who only saw the headlines and opening paragraphs of the biggest outlets would have no idea a federal judge had already ordered this man deported.

Congressman Greg Casar, whose district includes the shooting site, went further than skepticism about the framing. He told NPR, "Over and over, ICE has shot people and then lied about what happened. We can see the lies with our own eyes." That is a serious charge to make within a day of an incident before any body-camera footage was public, and it is worth noting his own letter to DHS, examined below, was written the same day and cites only preliminary local news reports, not the investigation's findings.

A Congressman Demands Answers, Hours Into the Investigation

Casar sent a formal letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting ICE Director David Venturella dated September 20, the day of the shooting. In it, he demands an independent investigation, the agent's suspension, and release of all body-camera and dash-camera footage. He also sets a deadline: a full briefing for him and his colleagues by September 28.

Casar is entitled to demand transparency, and unedited footage should be released once the investigation allows it. But the letter itself is built on a Texas Tribune report and local TV footage from the day of the shooting, not on any finding of wrongdoing, and it asks readers to treat DHS's account with "deep skepticism" before a single frame of body-camera video has been made public.

The Protests That Followed

Hundreds of people gathered near the shooting scene Sunday evening, waving flags and driving past with anti-ICE signage, according to FOX 7 Austin. Austin police said the crowd grew large enough that additional units were called in after some protesters began throwing rocks, bottles, and pieces of concrete. Three Austin police vehicles were damaged and three officers suffered minor injuries.

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers moved in around 10:15 p.m. to help clear the intersection. Three men, Robert Padgett, 48, Armando Menagarcia, 29, and Matthew Hemby, 44, were arrested on charges including riot, resisting arrest, and assault on a peace officer, and booked into the Travis County Jail. A second, smaller demonstration organized by the group La Frontera Unida gathered peacefully at the Texas Capitol on Monday night.

Not Austin's First, and What Happens Next

Sunday's shooting is at least the second involving immigration agents in Texas this year. In July, agents in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national and father of three, during an attempted traffic stop; he was not the target of the warrant agents were trying to execute. The first fatal shooting by immigration agents in Trump's second term was Ruben Ray Martinez, killed in South Padre Island in March 2025, both documented by NPR's reporting.

What happens to Garces Perez now runs on two separate tracks. Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI are working the shooting itself, with the Austin Police Department and Texas Rangers conducting their own reviews. Separately, immigration proceedings continue on their own timeline: a final order of removal means the legal question of whether he can stay in the country was already decided before Sunday, regardless of how the shooting investigation concludes.

Both tracks matter, and neither cancels out the other. An agent who used unjustified force should answer for it under whatever the body-camera footage and forensic evidence actually show. A man who had already exhausted his legal challenges to a deportation order does not lose that status because a news story leads with his job instead of his paperwork. Readers who only saw the first version of this story this week never got the second.