Congressman says Venezuelan man shot by ICE then taken into custody told he needs surgery

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Democratic congressman said Wednesday that a Venezuelan man shot by a federal immigration officer in Texas and then taken to a detention center has been told by a specialist he needs surgery to remove the bullet still lodged near his spine.

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar visited a federal detention center in south Texas where Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, was taken into custody after being shot Sunday in Austin by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Casar said Garces Perez was in a wheelchair and still in pain, but did not say whether the family had decided that he should undergo surgery. The Department of Homeland Security has said Garces Perez, who has been taken to a hospital twice since the shooting, is receiving around-the-clock medical care and pain medication.

"If they want to say it’s great medical care, they should start providing great medical care today by having him leave the detention center, go to a hospital or to a doctor, and do not delay his surgery if that’s what his family chooses to do,” Casar said.

Casar, whose district includes Austin, was the first member of Congress to visit Garces Perez in person since the shooting. He said the wound in Garces Perez's back remains bloody and medical staff change his gauze two or three times daily.

Following Casar's visit and a press conference, DHS issued a previous statement denying claims that Garces Perez was forced to sleep on a floor or that he was prevented from having the bullet removed, saying ICE would not advise on a medical procedure for a detainee.

Garces Perez was making a DoorDash delivery when ICE officers in an unmarked truck sideswiped his car twice, his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said. He was shot and taken to a hospital, then released into ICE custody with a bullet still in his back, she said.

ICE and DHS haven't said what led to the shooting beyond that Garces Perez was “the subject of a targeted vehicle stop."

ICE has not said if the agent who fired was wearing a body camera. At the beginning of September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he expected all field agents to have them by the end of the month.

Austin police released body camera footage from its officers who arrived just after the shooting. Garces Perez is seen hunched over in the front seat of his car and grabbing his shoulder and rocking back and forth. An officer later cut off Garces Perez’s shirt, and a wound can be seen in his upper back.

Garces Perez entered the U.S. in 2024 using CBP One, a program begun under President Joe Biden that allowed migrants to make appointments with U.S. authorities to be considered for asylum, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. President Donald Trump ended the program on his first day in office.

Garces Perez was an asylum seeker and had a valid work permit, according to Lincoln-Goldfinch. She said a judge issued a deportation order after Garces Perez missed an immigration court hearing because the notice was sent to a former address.

Garces Perez's shooting came at the end of a summer in which ICE notably ramped up enforcement operations in Austin and surrounding suburbs and increasingly targeted immigrants without criminal records in public places.

In all, ICE made more than 1,000 arrests in Austin, Pflugerville and other nearby cities during June and July, more than an 80% increase from a year earlier, which had been the previous peak, according to ICE data provided to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and analyzed by The Associated Press.

Unlike some other places, the increases in Austin were not driven by partnerships with local law enforcement agencies or by picking up jail inmates. Instead, the data shows that ICE officers made the vast majority of arrests in the community through traffic stops and other enforcement methods.

Nearly 2 out of 3 people who were arrested in the Austin area had no criminal convictions and no pending criminal charges, the data shows.

Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

Wilder is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis, left, and Mayor Kirk Watson watch as footage from a body-worn camera is played during a news conference at the Austin Public Safety Headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, providing an update after an ICE agent shot and wounded Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in Austin, Texas, Sunday. (Sara Diggins/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

In this image taken from an Austin Police Department officer's body camera video shown at a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, officers inspect Wilber Rafael Garces Perez's wound after he was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Sunday, Sept. 20 in Austin. (Austin Police Department via AP)

Demonstrators gather in response to the shooting of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan man who was shot in his vehicle by an ICE officer the previous day in Austin, Texas, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Joel Angel Juarez)

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar and members of his staff leave the South Texas ICE Processing Center where he visited with Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan man shot by an ICE officer, in Pearsall, Texas, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man was executed Wednesday evening in Texas for a triple killing committed during a robbery attempt at a rural home, one week after the other man convicted in the case was put to death.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was the sixth person to be put to death so far this year in Texas, with three more executions scheduled in the state over the next two months.

In the execution chamber, a prison chaplain rested his left hand on Ramey’s right shoulder and offered a brief prayer before the warden asked the prisoner if he had any last words.

Ramey then praised God and thanked friends and family and “brothers on death row” who he said “grew up with me” and helped him become a man.

“I came in young and didn’t understand,” he said in his statement, moments before the injection got underway.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, Ramey took a deep breath, sputtered and then began snoring. After 10 loud snoring sounds and two that were nearly inaudible, all movement ceased.

Afterward, a physician examined Ramey and pronounced him dead before the body was covered with a white sheet.

A jury had convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death for the August 2005 shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, at the home they shared in Edna, a small rural city some 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Houston.

Ramey and LeJames Norman believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, according to court records. The men entered the home with guns, found none and fatally shot the three residents, who lived just across the street from Norman, the records show.

Norman was executed on Sept. 16 at the Huntsville prison, where all Texas executions are carried out.

Including Ramey's execution, a total of 28 inmates have been put to death in various U.S. states so far this year. Florida leads all those states by far with 15 executions to date in 2026 as the nation's busiest death chamber.

Hours before Wednesday's execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ramey's final appeal.

His attorneys had argued that jurors had never heard about how Ramey suffered physical abuse as a child and grew up in poverty. State prosecutors told the court the appeal was “meritless” and argued that the evidence showed Ramey had “an escalating pattern of criminal behavior.”

Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the U.S. from Mexico, where he had fled. He went on to testify during Ramey’s trial in January 2007 that both he and Ramey shot the victims. Ramey’s attorneys blamed the shootings on Norman.

Ramey’s former girlfriend testified that she was with Ramey when he threw two pistols into a lake after the killings, and that he told her in detail about his involvement.

Lopez was shot four times, including in the back of the head; Peacock was shot twice in the head; and Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.

Norman was sentenced to death in December 2008 after pleading guilty to capital murder.

This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Ker'Sean Ramey on Oct. 31, 2022. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)

FILE - The state of Texas execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas, is seen on May 27, 2008. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)