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 torso and taken to a local \u200bhospital, officials told reporters at a press conference. The ICE agent shot him\u00a0during a brief \u200cpursuit on foot shortly before 1 p.m. (1800 GMT), Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.<\/p>\n
Immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch identified the victim to multiple news outlets as Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, and posted on social media that she is representing his family. Lincoln-Goldfinch said he was released from the hospital on Sunday into the apparent custody of ICE.<\/p>\n
Perez is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, a law enforcement \u200csource \u200btold CNN. Lincoln-Goldfinch told the Texas Tribune that her client entered the \u2060United States legally.<\/p>\n
ICE and the US Department \u2060of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
City officials did not identify the man who was shot, and said they did not know the identity of the ICE agent involved. Austin Police Chief Davis said she had not been briefed yet by federal officials and had few details about \u200bthe 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 \u2060advocates.<\/p>\n
CALLS FOR POLICE INVESTIGATION<\/p>\n
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat, said he \u2060wants city police involved in the investigation, with the additional participation of the \u200bTexas Rangers.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my perspective, the credibility of ICE doing some form of an investigation just by itself and excluding others \u200bwould not be appropriate,\u201d Watson said, adding that he is angry about the shooting but \u200cnot surprised by it.<\/p>\n
ICE recently started detaining more people in Austin, Watson and US Representative Greg\u00a0Casar, a Texas Democrat,\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a few weeks ago, as we saw the 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 \u2060news coverage on Sunday afternoon showed protesters gathered across the street from a blue Toyota Corolla that had sustained damage to the passenger-side door, as ICE agents stood nearby.<\/p>\n
Rights advocates say the federal immigration crackdown under President\u00a0Donald Trump \u2060violates free speech and due process \u200crights. Trump defends his actions by saying he aims to improve domestic security.<\/p>\n
PATTERN OF \u2060ICE SHOOTINGS<\/p>\n
Federal immigration officials have been involved in multiple shootings this year, including \u200bthe killing \u200cof two US citizens in Minnesota, which sparked a widespread backlash. More than \u200b50 people \u2060have died in ICE detention since Trump returned to office 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 Non, \u200bMatthew Lewis and Christian Schmollinger)<\/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":442654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-442653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442653","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=442653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}