Federal prosecutors have charged the Venezuelan delivery driver shot by an ICE agent with assaulting a federal officer, according to court documents unveiled Tuesday.
CBS News reported that prosecutors in Texas accuse 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces Perez of striking an ICE officer with his vehicle's side-view mirror as he drove away to evade arrest. He faces one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer. The shooting happened Sept. 20 in the 7000 block of West Anderson Lane in North Austin.
The allegations come from an eight-page affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. A Homeland Security Investigations agent wrote it in support of a criminal complaint. That agent says he interviewed only one of the two ICE officers involved, identified as D.F.
The other officer, L.G., was the one who opened fire, and that officer's account is not in the filing.
So the charging document rests on the account of the officer who did not shoot. Keep that in mind.
D.F. says both agents began following Garces Perez's car after checking his plate and finding a final order of removal from an immigration judge. The affidavit says the agents, in separate vehicles, pulled him over and parked in front of and behind his car. They told him to get out. He allegedly ignored the order and asked L.G. if he could move the car and park it.
The Gateway Pundit, a right-leaning outlet, adds that an ICE SUV rammed his blue Toyota Corolla as he tried to drive away, and that an agent then shot him as he tried to flee. That outlet cites unnamed reports for the ramming. The affidavit details quoted above do not address it.
Garces Perez was taken to a local hospital and is in stable condition, per the Gateway Pundit. The site says he claimed officers yanked him out of the car after the shooting. It says police bodycam footage shows officers helping him out and cuffing him. We have not independently reviewed that footage. The image attached to the post shows a bodycam-style view of a person being detained in a vehicle.
The allegations are prosecutors' claims, not findings. Garces Perez's side of the mirror incident is not in the source material.
Next up is the case itself in the Western District of Texas. L.G.'s account of the shooting is still not in the public record.