A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan man once in the torso during an enforcement operation in north Austin on Sunday, leaving him in serious but stable condition and prompting overlapping federal, state and local investigations.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said the shooting occurred shortly before 1 p.m. after a vehicle stop and a brief foot pursuit. City police were not part of the federal operation, and the Texas Department of Public Safety said its troopers arrived only after the shot had been fired, according to accounts from AP and Reuters. What led the agent to fire has not been publicly established.

The Department of Homeland Security said Homeland Security Investigations, assisted by the FBI, is leading the federal inquiry. DHS described the wounded man as someone who entered the country illegally and was subject to a final removal order. His family’s immigration attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, identified him as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez and disputed parts of the federal account, while acknowledging to AP that she did not yet know his current immigration status. Those competing claims remain unresolved.

Local Officials Seek Access to the Evidence

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson asked that the Austin Police Department and Texas Rangers participate so the review would not be controlled only by the federal agency whose officer fired the shot. The city police department’s special investigations unit went to the scene, but Davis said Sunday that federal officials had not yet briefed her and that she had few verified details.

The Travis County district attorney’s office went further, asking that local police and prosecutors become “co-equal partners” in the investigation and receive access to federal evidence. Its official statement said potential violations of state law could fall within local jurisdiction. That does not establish criminal wrongdoing; it explains why county prosecutors say an inquiry confined to DHS would be insufficient.

Rep. Greg Casar, whose district includes parts of Austin, separately asked DHS to preserve all evidence, release complete footage and share material with state and local authorities and the department’s inspector general. His formal request also seeks a congressional briefing by Sept. 28 on whether officers followed operational and evidence-preservation rules. Casar, a Democrat and a critic of the administration’s immigration enforcement, has also called for ICE to end its Austin surge.

The Accounts Diverge on Immigration Status

DHS said Garces Perez had a final removal order and was in federal custody pending removal after his release from the hospital. Lincoln-Goldfinch initially said she believed he had no removal order and no criminal history, but later told AP that she could not confirm his status. She also said his wife was not told promptly that he had been released to ICE custody.

The distinction matters legally and factually, but it does not by itself resolve whether the shooting was justified. A removal order can authorize detention and deportation; it does not answer what happened during the pursuit, whether the officer perceived an imminent threat or whether force complied with agency policy. Those questions depend on evidence that had not been released by early Monday, including officer statements, any body-camera or vehicle footage, physical evidence and medical records.

The most detailed local reconstruction remains preliminary. The Texas Tribune reported that state troopers received an ICE request around 12:50 p.m. to help pursue a blue Toyota Corolla, but the shooting occurred before they arrived. Photographs showed the vehicle beneath an overpass with damage to a passenger-side door and holes in a window. Images alone do not establish the sequence of events or the direction of gunfire.

A Protest Complicated the Scene

About 100 protesters gathered near the shooting site as federal and local officers remained in the area. The demonstration became tense later in the day; police deployed less-lethal munitions after authorities said some people threw rocks and bottles. That confrontation was separate from the earlier shooting and should not be treated as evidence about the agent’s decision to fire.

Emergency officials said Garces Perez was taken to a trauma center in serious but stable condition. A brief Washington Post report, citing the Austin-Travis County emergency medical chief, independently confirmed the torso wound and hospital transfer. By Sunday evening, his attorney said the hospital had released him into federal custody, although his precise location was not immediately clear.

What the Investigations Must Establish

The inquiry now has several distinct tasks: reconstructing the vehicle stop and pursuit, determining what threat the agent believed existed, testing that account against video and physical evidence, and resolving who controls evidence shared among federal, state and local investigators. It must also identify the officer, document training and policy requirements, and clarify Garces Perez’s immigration and custody records without treating those records as a substitute for the use-of-force analysis.

The Austin shooting occurred during a broader expansion of immigration arrests. AP reported that ICE made more than 50,000 arrests in both July and August, the first time the agency exceeded that monthly level. The same report noted other ICE shootings this year, including fatal and nonfatal cases, which makes the independence and transparency of the Austin review a national issue rather than only a dispute over local jurisdiction.

For now, the evidence establishes that an ICE officer wounded Garces Perez during a federal operation, that he survived and entered federal custody, and that multiple agencies have asserted investigative roles. It does not yet establish why the officer fired or whether the shooting complied with law and policy. The next consequential development will be whether DHS gives outside investigators the footage and records they have requested, allowing the competing accounts to be tested against a common evidentiary record.