Man Shot by ICE Agent Is Charged With Assault

Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez was shot by an ICE agent. Now the Justice Department is charging Pérez.

The food delivery driver shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last week, Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, was charged with one count of assaulting, resisting, interfering, and impeding a federal officer on Tuesday.

The Department of Justice accused Garcés Pérez of ignoring federal agents’ instructions and driving away from them when they tried to pull him over in Austin, Texas. As he left, the DOJ claimed, his driver’s side mirror hit one of the agents in the chest. An ICE agent said that after a short, high-speed car chase, Garcés Pérez tried to hit him with his car, at which point the agent said he shot into the car and hit Garcés Pérez in the back.

Parts of the incident were captured by a body camera, according to the DOJ, but only still images have been released to the public so far. Garcés Pérez disputes the government’s account, stating that a black SUV came out of nowhere and tried to hit his car while he was in the middle of a food delivery.

Garcés Pérez said that he thought the SUV was an aggressive driver and tried to drive away, only for the SUV to ram his car and turn on its police lights after the crash. He was then shot after the car was stopped, according to The New York Times.

Since the incident, Garcés Pérez’s lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said that he has languished in ICE custody without adequate medical care, having spent just three hours in a hospital before being taken into ICE’s detention center in Pearsall, Texas, without being able to see his wife. A spokesperson for Lincoln-Goldfinch said in a statement Tuesday that the bullet is still lodged in Garcés Pérez’s body even after nearly nine days.

“Rather than provide the life saving medical care he needs, DHS and the government are playing games with his life,” the statement said.

Pete Hegseth Is About to Slash a Fifth of All Military Leadership

Hegseth has said he wants “less generals, more GIs.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is doing everything he can to clear the deck of battle-tested leaders as he prepares to drag President Donald Trump’s supposedly “six-week war” into its eighth month.

Hegseth is plotting to cut 20 percent of the Pentagon’s slots for admirals and generals, two officials told The Hill Tuesday. The secretary will formally announce the reductions during his State of the Force address in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday.

Hegseth has already overseen a vast reduction in the number of top-ranking military personnel. At the time of his confirmation, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. Now there are just five—the smallest number to lead the service in years.

In May, Hegseth signed an order directing the U.S. military to slash the number of active-duty four-star generals, as well as general and flag officers, by 10 percent, and reduce the number of general officers in the National Guard by a minimum of 20 percent. At the time, Hegseth claimed the “Less Generals, More GIs” policy would allow for a leaner military structure, but provided no guidance for how these cuts ought to actually be made.  

In April, Hegseth fired Army........

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