The Venezuelan migrant shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin, Texas, is being held at a detention center in Pearsall, about a two-hour drive from the state capital, the office of his lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said. Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez still has the bullet lodged in his body, has not received pain medication, and had to sleep on the floor, Lincoln-Goldfinch said.

The 28-year-old migrant was making DoorDash deliveries on Sunday morning when he was intercepted and shot by at least one ICE agent at an intersection in Austin. It is unclear exactly what happened before at least one federal officer fired at the blue Toyota Corolla Garcés was riding in and before the migrant was taken to the hospital. Videos shot by passersby showed a vehicle stopped in front of a black pickup and, seconds later, several gunshots.

In another video filmed in front of the car, a man is seen sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open when an agent approaches him and quickly turns away while speaking into what appears to be a portable radio or cellphone. The footage does not show the agent providing emergency aid to the driver. Finally, another video shows a man on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance.

During Sunday afternoon and part of Monday morning, his lawyer and his wife, Elizdar, unsuccessfully tried to obtain information about Garcés’s whereabouts and condition. The lawyer even posted a video on her Instagram account a few hours ago asking ICE to contact her.

After that, Lincoln-Goldfinch’s press contact, Fabiana Meléndez, confirmed to EL PAÍS that the lawyer was able to speak with Garcés. That is when she obtained details about his condition.

‘Mama, Immigration is chasing me’

Lincoln-Goldfinch had previously told a local outlet that Garcés left for work in the morning and around midday called his wife to report the incident. “He called screaming that he had been shot and was in a lot of pain and then hung up,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said.

A similar account was given by the migrant’s mother, Flor Pérez, from Venezuela. “He called me at 1.40 p.m., Venezuela time. He shouted: ‘Mama, Immigration is chasing me, they shot me’ […] He hung up quickly to call his wife,” she told independent journalist Carlos Moreno by phone.

ICE, the most visible agency in President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant apparatus, said in a statement sent to EL PAÍS that the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are leading the probe into “the agent involved in a shooting against an undocumented migrant from Venezuela.” It added that Garcés entered the United States irregularly during the administration of Joe Biden and that he had a final order of removal. “His condition is stable and he is in federal custody awaiting deportation,” the statement said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said ICE requested assistance at about 12.50 p.m. local time regarding a pursuit of a blue Toyota Corolla. That agency added that its officers arrived after the shooting.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, meanwhile, called for an independent investigation. “While I’m angry and disappointed, I’m not surprised. This has happened in other cities. With the rogue nature of ICE and the chaos we’re seeing fomented by ICE, there’s no reason to be surprised,” the Democrat wrote on his X account.

“Though APD [Austin Police Department] was not involved in the shooting, I believe that there needs to be an investigation that APD assures is clear-eyed, as complete as possible, and independent,” he added.

The incident comes just over two months after ICE shot immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston during an operation in which he was not the target, as the Department of Homeland Security itself acknowledged. The Mexican died that same day and the incident sparked large protests in the city. The case is being reviewed by a grand jury at the request of the Harris County district attorney’s office, the largest in the state and where the shooting occurred.

As in this Sunday’s case in Austin, Salgado’s son, Ronaldo, did not receive immediate information about his father’s medical condition when he went to the scene. He went to the hospital where he believed his father was being treated and was not informed of his condition there either. By then, DHS had already briefed the press about the Mexican immigrant’s death.

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Washington-based media outlets CNN, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), and Politico announced on Monday that they were filing a lawsuit against the Donald Trump administration in response to the decision — made public last Friday by the president himself — to deny them access to the White House. In solidarity with their stance, the other four major television networks — CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox News, which make up the group that takes turns following the president with their cameras — have informed the government that they are withdrawing, effective immediately, from participating in the joint coverage provided by that press pool. This means they will not respond to the pool’s call and, therefore, will not share footage of the president’s events with the rest of the press.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three outlets said in a joint statement. They said the decision was made “without notice or process” and that Trump’s stated motivation, expressed by him on Truth, is that he does not like their coverage. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit, which can be read here, says.

Trump responded to the announcement on Truth Social, saying: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

The lawsuit names Trump, Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, and Sean Curran of the Secret Service. Two agents under their command prevented three reporters who regularly cover the president from entering the complex on Saturday. The journalists were Betsy Klein of CNN, Akayla Gardner of MS NOW, and Cheyenne Haslett of Politico.

Klein said on air that her permanent pass had been confiscated (a “hard pass,” in Washington jargon) and that she was given no further explanation when she asked.

Those explanations had to be sought in a Trump post on Truth the previous day, which caught Washington’s political and media ecosystem by surprise and left the capital’s press feeling an unprecedented chill.

The message was written in the US president’s distinctive prose. ““I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them “alive.” Seems like corruption to me!),” he wrote.

Trump accused those outlets of “‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” although he offered no evidence to support the accusations that accompanied the announcement. The post argues that “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.” The post also contains a threat, of which he provided no further details: “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

“There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he said later at a meeting with the press in the Oval Office. He argued those outlets “intentionally write negative things, and they do so because they want to try to discredit Republicans and a Republican administration.” During that appearance, in what appeared to be a slip of the tongue, he said that it amounts to a veto on the “free press.” In response to a question about China, he stated that the United States “is also [a country] that represses” the freedom of the press.

If the case goes to trial, lawyers for the three outlets are expected to invoke the free-press argument to defend the interests of the two cable news networks and the digital outlet.

CNN and Trump have their own precedent. In 2018, the Republican president and the network faced off in court. That was when the White House revoked accreditation (and literally grabbed the microphone during a tense press conference) from one of the network’s star reporters, Jim Acosta. The judge assigned to the case quickly sided with the network. He ordered Acosta’s pass returned and the administration let the matter drop.

With Trump now more obsessed than he was then with carrying out a vindictive agenda against those he considers his enemies, it is hard to believe this time the matter will be resolved with a concession on his part.

In the 18 months since he returned to power, Trump has sued outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, secured multimillion-dollar settlements from CBS and ABC News, pursued pollsters that published unfavorable or inaccurate surveys, and barred the Associated Press news agency from the Oval Office and the presidential plane when it refused — in contradiction of a government decree — to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” That lawsuit is still unresolved.

Over the weekend, the president’s allies repeated the claim that his predecessor, Joe Biden, revoked credentials from “400 journalists” when he took office. In reality, it was a routine White House process in which reporters lose their passes when they choose not to renew them or when the presidency determines that a given journalist no longer covers it regularly. In the last round of that kind of purge, the Trump administration also canceled dozens of hard passes.

“The president said it very clearly in the Oval Office, describing his own plan as a ‘ban on the free press,’” said Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), speaking on behalf of the journalists who cover the president last Friday. “The Constitution protects freedom of the press from government interference. That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news outlet’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of its reporters’ questions,” she added. “This is about more than journalists’ rights. It is about the American people’s right to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies, and decisions of whoever holds the nation’s highest office. The Association stands with our colleagues at CNN, MS NOW and Politico, who were punished for doing their jobs.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association represents the professionals who permanently cover presidential news: about 900 journalists from more than 250 outlets worldwide.

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Alejandro Betancourt’s tentacles in Spain are long. The Venezuelan businessman who amassed a fortune after his country’s power crisis at the end of the 2010s has seen his wealth rise again after the Trump administration touched him with the magic oil wand, entrusting him with crude exploitation in a deal with the government of Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. The billionaire’s assets in Madrid alone are substantial, according to police documents that are part of an ongoing investigation into alleged money laundering. Authorities seized five luxury cars, a United Arab Emirates residency card and 17 firearms at his private estate in Toledo.

Documents being published by EL PAÍS lay out how a joint operation organized by Switzerland and the police and Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in Spain carried out a series of judicial searches on August 28 last year that targeted the billionaire, who remains under investigation in Spain for money laundering and tax evasion. Six officers from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) attended the Alamín estate, 35 miles from Madrid in Toledo province, carrying an order from High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz. The property, bought by Betancourt in 2012, is valued at over €25 million ($28.7 million) and covers 1,440 hectares. Police say that although the property is registered to the company Inversiones Agrícolas Trieste, it is where the Venezuelan actually lives when he is on Spanish soil.

The tycoon has been under investigation by Spanish authorities since June 2025, when the Anti-Corruption Unit filed a complaint against him, his business partner Pedro Trebbau, and four other individuals for allegedly bringing money into Europe derived “from fraud” totaling $4.35 billion stemming from a loan from the state-owned oil company PDVSA to the private firm Administrador Atlantic. Specifically, the prosecution believes Betancourt laundered part of that money — an amount not yet quantified — through investments in companies and real estate in Spain.

Police searched six addresses in Spain, including the Alamín estate, to trace the funds. At Betancourt’s property they found several luxury cars: two Porsche Cayennes, a third Porsche with Venezuelan plates, a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta without plates and a Mini Cooper Cabrio. Officials consulted the Swiss authorities about whether to seize them and three of the vehicles were flagged as relevant to the investigation.

The Venezuelan vanished, sources in the investigation said, once the UDEF entered the grounds. Agents had tracked him and knew he was at Alamín, but after gaining access they found only his wife and sister. That did not stop the search, which was detailed in a police report. In his mother’s bedroom they found a UAE residency card in the businessman’s name issued December 6, 2023, and valid until December 5, 2025, and in another room they found a cellar with “an indeterminate number of bottles of wine and alcoholic beverages.”

The estate contains a room “set up as an armory” which, according to the police account, was “locked,” but later opened by a man of about 42 who said he was “responsible for keeping the key” to the room. He said he did not know what was inside and, once police opened it, they found 17 weapons (13 rifles and four shotguns) “without the corresponding documentation” and registered in the name of a third party, M. E. G. R. They also found three firearm silencers and assorted ammunition. The only cash discovered amounted to $8,600.

Betancourt’s networks in Spain extend to some well-known figures in the conservative opposition Popular Party and to the publisher of a mainstream outlet, according to sources close to the probe. The estate is not his only lavish property. On the Madrid–Toledo border the Casa de Yeguas of Alamín was also searched, where the UDEF found only “tools,” “agricultural equipment,” “derelict buildings and stables,” “old furniture” and “remnants of agricultural products.” They also found 60 cows and two fighting bulls.

Through his companies, the Venezuelan owns two other flats in the capital — one facing the Puerta de Alcalá and another on Paseo de la Castellana, both in well-heeled downtown neighborhoods. Officers likewise found nothing of note there. In one flat, inside the master bedroom’s dressing room, they examined two safes built into the wall — one behind a mirror and the other “revealed after removing a piece of furniture.” The Police Technical Intervention Group (GOIT), which specializes in this type of search, found nothing beyond an empty Cartier envelope.

Part of the seized material was sent to the Swiss investigators, while little progress has been made on the Spanish case since then. Judge Pedraz attempted to dismiss the case on one occasion after Betancourt submitted a document in which Venezuela exonerated him of the alleged corruption offenses involving PDVSA. If the money does not have an illicit source (in this case, embezzlement from the oil company, the proceeds of which were used to enrich the defendants), it could not be proven that the investments in Europe were made to launder this money. The Criminal Chamber of the National Court ordered the judge to reopen the case and wait for the United States to provide the testimony of five key witnesses. These are five individuals who have already been convicted there in connection with the scheme known as “Money Flight,” which acknowledges that payments were made to PDVSA officials to enable money to be siphoned off from the oil company through a disguised operation.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office maintains that if those witnesses testify in the Spanish case the predicate offense would be established and investigators could deepen the probe into Betancourt and his circle’s alleged money laundering activities. Betancourt rejects any corruption accusation and has submitted Venezuelan documentation seeking exoneration. Washington, which has made Betancourt its point of contact with Delcy Rodríguez’s government, has for months not replied to the Spanish High Court’s request for judicial cooperation, which is not only stalling the investigation but has put it on a timetable. Judge Pedraz has said that if he does not have a response by December, he will have no choice but to close the investigation into the billionaire.

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