Caracas (AFP) – The family of a Venezuelan man shot by US immigration agents while delivering a DoorDash order told AFP on Wednesday that he required surgery urgently for a bullet lodged near his spine. Wilber Garces Perez, 28, told reporters he was working on Sunday in Austin, Texas, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rammed his vehicle. He said he performed a U-turn with the intention of parking the car when an agent shot him in the back. The shooting marked the latest instance of violence by ICE agents tasked with enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The US Department of Homeland Security said it was investigating the incident. It claimed Garces Perez “illegally entered our country under the Biden administration and had a final order of removal.”
His family, however, insisted that he entered the US legally under a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans that Trump halted after returning to the White House last year. Garces Perez was hospitalized for his injuries and then taken to an ICE detention center, with the bullet still inside his body. His mother, Flor Perez, who spoke to him by phone, told AFP that her son called her from his car after being shot, saying: “Mom, they shot me, they shot me.” In an interview from her home in the Venezuelan state of Lara, she said he had suffered paralysis on the left side of his body and required urgent surgery to remove the bullet.
Speaking to reporters by phone on Monday, Garces Perez confirmed that he was “in a lot of pain.” He said the shot fractured his clavicle and “at the hospital where they took me they couldn’t remove the bullet because it’s close to the spinal cord.” He said the doctors appeared in a hurry to discharge him and that his room at the detention center had no bed.
– ‘Not a criminal’ –
Garces’ other relatives in Venezuela denounced what they saw as the lack of transparency in his arrest and unjustified use of force. “The truth is, there was no reason to shoot Wilber. They say he fled. However, I don’t think that’s a valid reason. He’s not a criminal,” his aunt Gladys Perez, a teacher, said.
Garces Perez’s lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said he was in the US “legally with a work permit.” The injured man’s son, who suffers from cerebral palsy, lives with his grandmother in Venezuela. The family said he depends financially on money that his father sends from Texas for his treatment. ICE agents have shot and killed several people during Trump’s second term, including three Americans, two of them activists, and a Mexican migrant.
© 2024 AFP
