An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan man in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. The case carries the agonizing familiarity of yet another violent ICE encounter involving an immigrant who was simply going about his day.

The man was 28 year old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, who was making a DoorDash delivery when he was shot. According to his lawyer, Pérez entered the United States lawfully as an asylum seeker and has a valid work permit.

Pérez was driving when an ICE vehicle pulled alongside his car without any emergency lights activated and tried to hit him, according to the account detailed in the source. Pérez continued driving after a seemingly random vehicle attempted to smash into his car.

Only after sideswiping Pérez did the ICE vehicle activate its emergency lights. As Pérez looked for a safe place to pull over, the ICE vehicle hit his car again.

An ICE agent then got out of the vehicle and shot Pérez through his car door. The rapid escalation fits a grim pattern in which immigrants trying to work, return home, or otherwise live their lives encounter federal agents ready to use violent force.

The Austin shooting echoes a July case in Maine involving a 25 year old Colombian immigrant. An ICE agent shot and killed him while alleging that he was attempting to flee the scene and treating that alleged flight as justification for shooting him.

Another similar encounter occurred in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. There, ICE agent Christian Castro shot a Venezuelan immigrant through the door of his home after the man ran away from him.

Castro claimed that he had been brutally attacked, while ICE, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office moved to charge the immigrant whom Castro had shot. That account fell apart after video surfaced, and Castro now faces state and federal criminal charges.

The tactics following these shootings have also become disturbingly familiar. After an ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston in July, ICE had him admitted to the hospital as a John Doe, with his identification and belongings removed so his family could not locate him to claim his body.

After Pérez was taken to a hospital, he was transferred to an undisclosed ICE location. His lawyer and family were initially unable to determine where federal agents had taken him.

On Monday, Pérez’s attorney said they had finally learned that he was being held at a detention camp in Pearsall, Texas, more than two hours away. Pérez still had a bullet lodged in his body while in detention.

The official response offers another bleak repetition of previous cases. The Department of Homeland Security said it is leading the investigation into Pérez’s shooting alongside the FBI, placing federal agencies in charge of examining the conduct of a federal immigration agent.

The experience described in Minnesota provides little reason for confidence in that process. There, the federal investigation was portrayed as no meaningful investigation at all, while federal authorities stonewalled efforts by local law enforcement to conduct their own inquiries.

The violence may no longer carry the same high profile attention seen in January 2026, but the underlying pattern has not disappeared. ICE continues inflicting deadly havoc on immigrants and blue cities, backed by a Trump administration that insists its enforcement campaign targets only the worst offenders even as cases such as Pérez’s tell a starkly different story.