AUSTIN, Texas — Slightly more than 100 protesters returned Sunday afternoon to the North Austin intersection where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan national one week earlier, according to Breitbart Texas, which observed the event as speakers delivered anti-ICE speeches from the bed of a pickup truck while passing motorists honked in support.
The rally, organized by the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, came seven days after the Sept. 20 shooting of Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez near the 7000 block of West Anderson Lane. The gathering followed a similar, sparsely attended PSL protest outside San Antonio City Hall on Friday, where a few dozen demonstrators waved signs blocks from the Alamo.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Garces-Perez entered the United States illegally during the Biden border crisis and had a final order of removal. DHS says he was shot after he attempted to flee from an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer during a targeted law enforcement operation. After receiving emergency medical treatment, Garces-Perez was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Pearsall, Texas, where he remains held.
'No Denying the Collaboration'
Speakers at Sunday's rally told the crowd a different story — that Garces-Perez was shot in the back while working as a DoorDash delivery driver.
"There is no denying the collaboration between APD and ICE, as it was APD that handcuffed Wilber and carried him away," one speaker told the crowd, according to Breitbart Texas. "There is no such thing as an impartial investigation by APD. We see with our own eyes. They are just as complicit in this violence and terror."
CBS Austin reported the demonstration stayed peaceful, with one Austin police car parked under an overpass for the duration. Officers on motorcycles and in patrol cars drove past periodically. Not everyone present agreed the intersection rally was the right approach — Austinite David Torres told CBS Austin he was heading to Pearsall to join a protest outside the detention facility holding Garces-Perez.
"We need to show that our power comes together when we're organized, and we can demand the things that we need to see change," Yayo Ayala, a PSL member, told CBS Austin.
Breitbart Texas reported attendees carried signs, some with violent imagery, just feet from the scene of the shooting. That follows a spontaneous protest at the same site days earlier where activists painted threatening graffiti on overpass support pilings and issued threats to kill President Donald Trump and ICE agents — prompting a Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol response.
Feds Fire Back at Sanctuary Politicians
DHS did not mince words in its account of the shooting.
"Resisting officers and evading arrest is dangerous for our officers, illegal aliens, and the public," the department said. "We remind the public that resisting officers and evading arrest is a felony and a federal crime. Sanctuary politicians need to stop encouraging this dangerous behavior that puts our officers and the public at risk."
The PSL's Austin protest is the latest in a running campaign against immigration enforcement in Texas. The organization is also opposing ICE's plan to retrofit a large commercial warehouse on San Antonio's east side into a detention center — a project Breitbart Texas reported was awarded to GardaWorld Federal Services under a contract worth more than $17 million.
The shooting remains under scrutiny, and the accounts offered by federal officials and protest organizers conflict on central questions — including whether Garces-Perez was fleeing on foot or seated in a vehicle, and where on his body he was struck. It is not yet known whether any independent investigation into the officer's use of force has been opened or completed.
Our Take
Here's what a week of this tells you. A man with a final order of removal — a judge already said he had no legal right to stay — ran from federal officers executing a lawful arrest, and the socialists have spent seven days turning him into a martyr while chanting for the abolition of the agency that did the job Americans asked it to do. The PSL isn't organizing for "justice." It's organizing against the very existence of immigration enforcement — and it's doing it in the streets with signs that, by Breitbart's account, included violent imagery, feet from where threats to kill a president were scrawled on public property a week ago.
That's the tell. When the graffiti says kill Trump and kill ICE agents, this stops being a protest and starts being a recruiting poster.
Texas didn't ask for this. Austin residents who just want safe streets didn't ask for it. But the PSL and its allies have decided that one shooting, however it's investigated, justifies an open season on the officers who put their lives on the line to enforce the border laws this country voted for in 2024.
So here's the question every patriot should be asking this Sunday: if the people chanting in Austin get their way, who exactly is left to stop the next criminal alien from hurting an American family? We already know the answer. And we already know who will be blamed when it happens.
