San Antonio socialists rallied at City Hall demanding ICE leave Texas after agents shot a Venezuelan illegal immigrant in Austin, a clash that pits enforcement against left-wing street politics.
A few dozen protesters gathered Friday at San Antonio’s City Hall, just blocks from the Alamo, after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan man during an operation in Austin. The Party for Socialism and Liberation organized the demonstration as a call for “justice” for Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez and pressed a broader demand that ICE leave the city.
Breitbart Texas reported the Friday turnout and the anti-ICE signs and chants. Some in the crowd also objected to ICE plans to retrofit a large commercial warehouse on San Antonio’s east side into a detention center. That project sits on a contract of more than $17 million awarded to GardaWorld Federal Services to renovate and operate the facility.
The shooting itself remains contested in public accounts. What is not contested is the core sequence: an ICE action in Austin on September 20, a wounded man, hospital treatment, and then federal custody.
On September 20, near the 7000 block of West Anderson Lane in Austin, an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer shot Garces-Perez during a targeted law enforcement operation. DHS officials say the Venezuelan man was in the country illegally after entering during the Biden border crisis, and that he was shot after he tried to flee the officer.
The New York Post reported he was shot once in the torso after a small foot pursuit, left in serious but stable condition, and is an alleged illegal immigrant with a final order of removal. After emergency medical treatment, he was placed in an ICE detention center in Pearsall, Texas.
Multiple outlets describe the same man, the same city, the same date, and the same outcome: a 28-year-old Venezuelan national wounded by an ICE officer in Austin and held in federal custody afterward. Those points line up across federal statements and national reporting.
Garces-Perez and his advocates tell a different story of how the stop unfolded. He has said officers in an unmarked truck sideswiped his car without warning lights or stop commands, then rammed the vehicle and shot him as he tried to park while working as a DoorDash driver. AP News reported he was shot once in the back and later released to ICE custody with the bullet still near his spine.
"I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound, and I have not received the medical attention that I require," Garces-Perez said by phone at a news conference Monday.
The Washington Examiner reported he is being held and questioned while the bullet remains lodged near his spine, and that it was not removed after hospital release because of its location.
His mother, Flor Perez, described a video call moments after the shooting. Reuters relayed her account of what her son told her.
"They crashed into my car and shot me," Flor Perez recalled her son telling her over a video call.
DHS has framed the encounter as a targeted stop and warned that resisting or evading officers is dangerous. The department’s account and the family’s account do not match on how the contact began. That dispute is now fuel for street politics as much as for any internal review.
PSL did not wait for a finished investigation to set its message. The group advertised the San Antonio City Hall protest around Garces-Perez and around a simple demand: ICE out. Attendees carried signs calling for the agency to leave the city. Organizers also planned a Sunday protest in Austin near the shooting scene for the one-week mark.
That track fits a wider pattern already visible in the capital. Socialist and communist groups organized Austin's 'spontaneous' anti-ICE protest in the hours after the shooting, complete with graffiti and threats that drew Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol troopers to the scene until the crowd broke up.
Local Democratic officials moved quickly to condemn ICE tactics. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said he was angry and unsurprised.
"I'm very angry about this... I'm not surprised at all. It's happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting."
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis pledged transparency and answers for the city. Rep. Greg Casar argued the wounded man belonged in medical care, not a detention setting.
"If you saw Wilber, just like if you saw anybody that had been shot three days ago, you would say this person needs a doctor, not a deportation or a detention center," said Rep. Greg Casar.
Those lines treat a man with a final order of removal as proof that enforcement itself is the scandal. They say little about why ICE was conducting a targeted operation in the first place, or about the risk created when a subject flees a federal stop.
San Antonio’s rally mixed the shooting with a second target: ICE’s warehouse detention plan on the city’s east side. The more than $17 million GardaWorld contract is a concrete expansion of bed space and operations. For PSL, it is another reason to demand the agency leave.
Enforcement cases elsewhere show why agents plan for flight risk and noncompliance. A Guatemalan man killed fleeing an ICE traffic stop in Grand Rapids had already been deported once, another reminder that prior removal orders and escape attempts are not abstract paperwork.
Reuters also noted a broader count of federal immigration agents shooting at least 20 people, seven fatally, since President Trump returned to office, and reported the Austin shooting officer lacked a body camera despite earlier vows to equip agents. Those figures will be used in court and on the street. They do not erase a final order of removal, an alleged illegal entry during the prior border crisis, or an officer’s claim that the subject tried to flee.
White House-adjacent fights over access and messaging continue in other lanes, including cases where Melania Trump's office approves CNN credentials despite a White House press ban, but the Texas dispute is simpler. It is about whether federal officers may arrest people who are in the country illegally and who have removal orders, and whether socialist organizers get a veto when a stop turns violent.
Strip away the chants and the record is blunt. Garces-Perez is a 28-year-old Venezuelan national shot by an ICE officer in Austin on September 20 during a vehicle-related enforcement action. He received emergency care, then went into ICE custody in Pearsall with serious injuries. DHS says he entered illegally and fled. He and his family say agents crashed into him without proper warning while he delivered food. He has a final order of removal on the public reporting. PSL answered with City Hall theater and an ICE-out slogan.
Open questions remain on body-camera policy, the exact second-by-second contact, medical care inside detention, and any administrative review of the officer’s use of force. None of those gaps require cities to eject the federal immigration agency, and none convert a removal-order case into a general amnesty for flight from lawful stops.
Texas already saw troopers hold the line at an Austin crowd that turned to threats and graffiti. San Antonio’s smaller socialist rally tried to nationalize the same grievance: paint ICE as the aggressor, ignore illegal status and removal orders, and demand the enforcers leave the taxpayer’s city.
Lawful immigration and secure borders cannot survive a politics that treats every arrest as an outrage and every officer as the problem. When socialists demand ICE abandon Austin and San Antonio after a shooting tied to a targeted stop, they are not seeking accountability. They are seeking a permission structure for open defiance of immigration law.