By Karen Sloan and Kanishka Singh<\/p>\n
Sept 20 (Reuters) \u2013 An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, city officials said, adding that the man was in serious but stable condition.<\/p>\n
The man was shot in the \u200btorso and taken to a local hospital, officials told reporters at a press conference. \u200cThe ICE agent shot him\u00a0during a brief pursuit on foot shortly before 1 p.m. local time, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.<\/p>\n
ICE, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
City officials did not identify the man who was shot, and said they did \u200cnot know \u200bthe identity of the ICE agent involved. Davis said she \u2060had not been briefed yet by \u2060federal officials and had few details about the incident.<\/p>\n
The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents involving ICE, which has become the face of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown and whose actions have drawn scrutiny and calls for accountability from rights advocates.<\/p>\n
CALLS FOR \u200bINDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION<\/p>\n
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat, said he wants city police involved in the investigation, with the additional participation of the Texas Rangers.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my perspective, the credibility of ICE doing some \u2060form of an investigation just by itself and excluding \u2060others would not be appropriate,\u201d Watson said, adding that he is angry \u200babout the shooting but not surprised by it.<\/p>\n
ICE recently started detaining more people in Austin, Watson and \u200bUS Representative Greg\u00a0Casar, a Texas Democrat,\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a few weeks ago, as we saw \u200cthe ICE surge come to Austin, especially to North Central Austin, I and others said that ICE needed to leave before someone was shot,\u201d said\u00a0Casar, whose district includes parts of Austin.<\/p>\n
Local\u00a0TV news coverage on Sunday afternoon showed protesters gathered across the street from a blue Toyota Corolla that had sustained \u2060damage to the passenger-side door, as ICE agents stood nearby.<\/p>\n
Rights advocates say the federal immigration crackdown under President\u00a0Donald Trump violates free speech and due process rights. Trump defends his actions by saying he aims \u2060to improve domestic security.<\/p>\n
PATTERN OF \u200cICE SHOOTINGS<\/p>\n
Federal immigration officials have been involved in multiple shootings this year, \u2060including the killing of two US citizens in Minnesota, which sparked \u200ba widespread \u200cbacklash. More than 50 people have died in ICE detention since \u200bTrump returned to \u2060office last year.<\/p>\n
The killing of US citizen Renee Good in Minnesota earlier this year showed that ICE cannot be trusted to provide accurate information about its shootings, Casar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important for us to have transparency and the true facts in this case,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cUnfortunately, ICE has not been truthful in shootings in other cities.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Karen Sloan in San Francisco and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sergio \u200bNon and Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Karen Sloan and Kanishka Singh Sept 20 (Reuters) \u2013 An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-442461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}