Austin ICE shooting sparks Texas student protest

About 100 high school students in central Texas protested against US immigration raids on Tuesday after ICE agents shot and wounded Venezuelan delivery driver Wilber Garces Perez in Austin on Sunday.

The students, from the Pflugerville school district, chanted against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Several protesters said they feared immigration enforcement tactics under President Donald Trump's policies.

Garces Perez's lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said Tuesday that he remained in a detention center with a bullet still lodged in his body after being taken to hospital twice. She said he was in pain and that the ICE agent who shot him was not wearing a body camera.

Garces Perez told reporters by phone Monday that the bullet fractured his collarbone and was lodged near his spine. He said it had not been removed despite his objections.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said a federal lawsuit had been filed and that a judge ordered Garces Perez to attend a first hearing on Wednesday, September 30, meaning he would not be deported before then.

The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said on X that “ICE does not and would not advise” on hospital medical procedures, denying a role in his treatment.

DHS has reported 51,000 arrests of undocumented people in the United States in August as ICE carries out raids around the country.