A Venezuelan man under a final deportation order faces federal assault charges after allegedly striking ICE officers with his car in an Austin chase, even as protesters and student walkouts followed the shooting.
Federal prosecutors have charged Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan national, with assaulting, resisting, interfering with, and impeding a federal officer after a Sept. 20 traffic stop in Austin turned into a high-speed pursuit and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.
Just The News reported that ICE agents pulled him over to serve a judge-issued final removal order, and that U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas announced the charge. Garces-Perez made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Howell, with a detention hearing set for October 2. Assistant U.S. Attorney Britni Verdeja is prosecuting the case, and ICE Homeland Security Investigations is handling the probe.
The Department of Homeland Security said Garces-Perez entered the country illegally under the Biden administration, held no valid work permit, had no protective status, and already carried a final order of removal from a Department of Justice immigration judge. That status put him squarely in the path of Enforcement and Removal Operations officers doing the job Congress assigned them.
Cases like this fit a wider pattern of Biden-era releases and entries that later collide with American communities, including a Biden-era illegal immigrant charged after a fatal DUI crash that killed an Indiana mother.
Texas Scorecard detailed the sequence drawn from court documents. Two ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers conducted the traffic stop. When one officer activated his lights, Garces-Perez allegedly failed to pull over and stopped only after the second officer blocked his vehicle.
Officers checked his driver’s license, confirmed he was the man under the removal order, and ordered him to put the car in park and step out. Court filings state that “GARCES said he knew he was going to be apprehended.” He allegedly ignored the command. An officer gave further instructions in Spanish. Garces-Perez then drove away.
His side-view mirror allegedly struck an officer in the torso as the officer tried to get clear. Lights and sirens followed. The pursuit tore through a commercial and residential area of Austin. One officer lost sight of the vehicle; the other caught up. Garces-Perez allegedly tried to strike an officer with the car, and that officer fired his pistol.
The Washington Examiner reported he was shot during the Austin stop and now faces the federal assault count announced by the Justice Department. Supporting accounts state he was shot in the back, treated, and released from the hospital hours later. DHS material described round-the-clock medical care and pain medication, then sleep on a bed after hospital release. DHS has also said aliens in ICE custody receive a higher standard of living than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens.
His attorney has claimed Garces-Perez was trying to stop in a safer location, not flee. The filing language cuts the other way: he knew apprehension was coming, disregarded commands, drove off, and allegedly used the vehicle against officers.
Breitbart reported that Garces-Perez has a final order of removal, remains in ICE custody for deportation, and was charged as he challenged the government’s effort to remove him. A federal judge ordered him to appear at a hearing tied to those proceedings. The criminal complaint lands on top of that immigration track, not instead of it.
That is the core failure voters keep watching: a final judicial removal order exists, officers try to execute it, and the encounter escalates because the subject refuses lawful commands and turns a car into a threat. Frontline officers are left to manage the risk in real time on city streets.
Border policy choices under the prior administration loaded more of these encounters onto ICE and local communities, a point underscored when Ken Salazar faulted the Biden White House for ignoring the border crisis until the damage was already done.
Similar fallout has shown up elsewhere when illegal entrants released into the country later face grave charges, including a Haitian national accused of killing a Florida woman after entering illegally and being released under Biden-era policies.
After the shooting, several protests took place, and some Austin ISD students walked out. DHS answered the political pressure with a straight enforcement line. The department said ICE will not slow down and will not leave Austin. “DHS is tasked with enforcing the laws passed by Congress. We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce or where to enforce them. We will continue to enforce our nation’s laws,” the statement read.
That posture matches a broader shift toward higher-tempo removals and arrests. DHS has doubled its daily arrest rate as ICE expands nationwide enforcement against illegal immigrants who already exhausted their legal process.
The Austin case is not abstract policy. It is a traffic stop on a man with a final removal order, a refused exit command, a side-view mirror to an officer’s torso, a chase through neighborhoods where families live and shop, and a vehicle allegedly aimed at a federal officer before a shot was fired. The charge that followed is assaulting and resisting a federal officer, the predictable legal result when someone treats immigration enforcement like an optional suggestion.
Garces-Perez still has his day in court on the criminal count and the separate removal track. The officers still have to finish the job they were sent to do. And the public still has to live with the consequences when final orders are ignored until force enters the picture.
Secure borders and obeyed court orders protect officers and neighborhoods alike, anything less invites the next chase.