{"id":443446,"date":"2026-09-21T23:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T23:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/443446\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T23:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T23:34:12","slug":"from-austin-to-minneapolis-mapping-the-rise-in-dhs-deadly-force-incidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/443446\/","title":{"rendered":"From Austin to Minneapolis: Mapping the rise in DHS deadly force incidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and wounded<\/a> 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garc\u00e9s Perez in Austin, Texas, on Sunday after they said he ran from a traffic stop while making a DoorDash delivery. Federal authorities are now investigating the shooting, and the Austin Police Department said it hasn\u2019t been allowed to see the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The incident sparked a protest that local authorities dispersed with pepper balls and tear gas after declaring it an unlawful assembly Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"QR<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the latest in a growing pattern of shootings by federal immigration agents since President Donald Trump\u2019s second-term crackdown began \u2014 one that\u2019s now stretched from Austin to Chicago to Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Shootings coast to coast<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of 2025, federal immigration agents have killed at least seven people during immigration-related arrests or protests surrounding their enforcement, according to a Straight Arrow analysis of data from the Gun Violence Data Hub<\/a>. At least a dozen have been injured in shootings.<\/p>\n

The first shooting occurred<\/a> on March 15, 2025, when agents killed Ruben Ray Martinez during a traffic incident in South Padre Island, Texas. ICE\u2019s role in the shooting wasn\u2019t confirmed until nearly a year later, when media outlets looked through Department of Homeland Security files.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scrutiny of federal agents reached a new high this year after they killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, less than a month from each other. The killings sparked major protests and prompted questions<\/a> from Congress over what federal immigration agents were doing in their immigration crackdown operation. But months later, those questions remain largely unanswered.<\/p>\n

\"map<\/p>\n

Accountability in DHS<\/p>\n

In January, ICE agent Christian Castro shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during an incident in Minneapolis and then claimed Sosa-Celis attacked him with a broom and shovel. The story held up long enough for prosecutors to charge<\/a> Sosa-Celis and another man, but surveillance footage later proved it false. Minnesota state prosecutors charged<\/a> Castro with assault and falsely reporting a crime.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the only time video evidence disputed a federal immigration agent\u2019s official report on a shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a Chicago suburb, an ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas Gonz\u00e1lez during a September 2025 traffic stop. DHS claimed Gonz\u00e1lez had dragged and seriously injured the agent with his car, but video analysis of the incident later contradicted those claims. In body cam video, the agent can be heard saying his injuries were \u201cnothing major,\u201d the Chicago Sun-Times<\/a> reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In both cases, and in Good\u2019s fatal shooting, federal prosecutors declined to bring charges over the shooting itself. Castro was indicted<\/a> in September. But he was only charged for lying about what happened after the assistant U.S. attorney on his case objected to his supervisors\u2019 decision not to pursue civil rights charges and was fired.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division made the same call in Good\u2019s killing, declining to investigate it at all, a decision that led at least four top officials in the division to resign<\/a>. The DOJ then pushed Minnesota prosecutors to instead investigate Good\u2019s widow\u2019s alleged ties to activist groups, prompting six more resignations, including the office\u2019s second in command.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s case, prosecutors also declined to charge<\/a> the agent, but even that news only surfaced when DHS confirmed it a year later. The DHS hasn\u2019t released the agent\u2019s name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How the investigative process works<\/p>\n

In most shootings involving federal agents, there is a process that takes place. ICE and Customs and Border Protection have their own Office of Professional Responsibility. Both offices are legally required to report every firearm discharge that causes death or injury to the DHS\u2019s Office of Inspector General.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in Good\u2019s case, that process was cut short. FBI agents and Minnesota investigators had begun a joint probe and obtained a warrant to collect evidence from her vehicle. FBI Director Kash Patel and senior DOJ officials shut the investigation down, according to The New York Times<\/a>, barring Minnesota from pursuing its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DHS said Monday that it\u2019s leading the Austin investigation into its own officer, according to The Guardian<\/a>. It\u2019s unclear if the agent was wearing a body camera. Austin\u2019s mayor has called for an independent probe, the same request that stalled in Minneapolis and Chicago.<\/p>\n

Round out your reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and wounded 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garc\u00e9s Perez in Austin, Texas, on Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-443446","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\/443446","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=443446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}