From the Mexican restaurant where he works in North Austin, Juan Perez has seen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain more and more people in the area.<\/p>\n
That includes construction workers, stopping at the gas station or the Dollar Tree for ice before their work day begins. And lone drivers, whose cars are left unattended after they\u2019re hauled away. On Saturday, Perez saw one guy taken away. On Thursday, another man, trying to flee, ran through the restaurant\u2019s parking lot. Perez did not see if ICE caught him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been going on for a month here and they\u2019ve just been \u2014 respectfully \u2014 terrorizing the whole area,\u201d Perez, 28, said as he looked past a mostly empty restaurant and onto the street on Monday. \u201cI just guess they\u2019re easy targets because a lot of people, a lot of construction people gotta put gas or whatever in the mornings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restaurant sits among a group of small businesses near the intersection where an ICE officer on Sunday shot and wounded<\/a> Wilber Rafael Garces Perez<\/a>, a 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela. To some in the area, a violent encounter was all but inevitable as they have seen federal agents \u2014 often in unmarked cars, sometimes accompanied by Texas Department of Public Safety troopers \u2014 pick up the pace of their hunting for immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just sad,\u201d Perez said, shaking his head. \u201cIf you were just going after rapists \u2026 I understand that. But I mean, you\u2019re going after hardworking people.\u201d<\/p>\n The shooting occurred amid a surge of ICE activity in Austin that is injecting fear into Latino residents, citizens and undocumented alike, according to others who work in the area, local activists and elected officials from Austin City Hall to Congress.<\/p>\n Garces Perez\u2019s violent arrest has placed a spotlight on the soaring number of ICE arrests, and renewed scrutiny on the willingness of Texas\u2019 GOP leaders to help President Donald Trump pursue his mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n ICE has divided Texas into five jurisdictions, and street arrests in the San Antonio jurisdiction, which includes Austin, have skyrocketed since the beginning of the year, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. <\/p>\n Since 2022, when the practice of apprehending undocumented people in the interior of the country was far less common under the Biden administration, the San Antonio jurisdiction has seen a 32.2-point increase in field-based arrests \u2014 one of the largest jumps in the country, the data review shows.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Hey, Mexican, come here,\u2019 type of enforcement,\u201d Austin City Council member Chito Vela, whose district includes the site of Garces Perez\u2019s shooting, said of the increased ICE presence. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about gas stations and, you know, parking lots of grocery stores \u2014 that kind of like really random enforcement of immigration laws that we have seen over the last 30 days.\u201d<\/p>\n Mario Tapia launched a magazine 12 years ago for Latinos in Central Texas. Since Trump returned to the White House, he has been publishing videos of ICE arrests on Instagram. He said the earliest videos he received from followers in April 2025 were difficult to initially confirm as ICE arrests because the officers drove unmarked cars and wore vests that simply said \u201cpolice.\u201d<\/p>\n But soon it became clear that the authorities were from ICE, he said, as more videos emerged, followed by accounts from relatives of those detained. He said he has documented two types of arrests during Trump\u2019s second term: some are initiated by DPS traffic stops, with troopers calling ICE if they confirm the person they pulled over is undocumented, while others are solo ICE pursuits, like the one that led to Garces Perez\u2019s shooting.<\/p>\n Tapia said most of the reports he receives are from North Austin, including the site of the shooting. <\/p>\n \u201cI understand this subject polarizes a lot of people,\u201d he said Monday. \u201cBut I wish people would notice what this all means not just for the undocumented immigrant community, but in general for the entire Hispanic community. There\u2019s fear.\u201d <\/p>\n Texas has played a starring role in the president\u2019s immigration crackdown. Shortly after Trump\u2019s return to Washington, Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> directed<\/a> DPS \u2014 and other state agencies<\/a> \u2014 to help the federal government. After years of patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border as part of Abbott\u2019s Operation Lone Star initiative, the state agency has redirected some resources<\/a> from the border to assist ICE in the interior of the state.<\/p>\n As of Monday evening, top Texas GOP officials \u2014 including the governor and the lieutenant governor \u2014 had yet to weigh in publicly on Garces Perez\u2019s shooting. <\/p>\n The increased ICE presence has put people on edge across the state capital.<\/p>\n Austin City Council member Zohaib \u201cZo\u201d Qadri, whose district covers central Austin, said his office has received reports from University of Texas at Austin students when they see something that makes them suspicious.<\/p>\n \u201cThe governor has weaponized DPS to kinda go around and terrorize folks in Austin,\u201d Qadri said. \u201cThe president has, you know, weaponized ICE to go around and terrorize folks in Austin.\u201d<\/p>\n Sulma Franco, the director of immigration campaigns at the Austin nonprofit Grassroots Leadership, said her group has also seen an uptick in immigration arrests on Austin\u2019s streets since Trump\u2019s return to office. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s terrible that Texas is turning into a laboratory for these racist laws,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating to see our community in constant fright.\u201d<\/p>\n Maria Elizabeth has witnessed the fear. The 30-year-old works at a restaurant behind a convenience store that serves Latin American cuisine, down the street from where ICE shot Garces Perez. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to stop by,\u201d Elizabeth said. \u201cThey\u2019re scared of the police, they\u2019re scared of ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday afternoon, the picnic tables near the counter were empty. Down the street, people began leaving candles and other objects to mark where Garces Perez was shot. <\/p>\n Sam Stark of the Austin Current contributed to this report.<\/p>\n Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a major financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the Mexican restaurant where he works in North Austin, Juan Perez has seen U.S. Immigration and Customs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,8077,1724,3647,287,293],"class_list":["post-443640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-department-of-public-safety","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-politics","tag-texas-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443640","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=443640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}