Imagine this- You’ve just been shot in the back. You’re making a door-dash delivery when ICE rams your car and then shoots you in the back. The bullet narrowly misses vital organs and your spine. The agent who shot you abandons you at the scene and doesn’t render aid. At the hospital, security guards stonewall your wife, they won’t tell her if you’re alive or dead and they kick her off hospital property. And just hours later you’re taken into ICE detention and now you’re in an internment camp without access to medical care, medications, stuffed into an overcrowded cell, maybe one toilet between 50 people, and fed inedible food.
That’s what happened to Wilber Rafael Perez yesterday after he was shot by a SOLO ICE agent. The agent shot Wilber in the back while the agent’s SUV was between them! The agent was alone and behind his SUV, there was no one else that could possibly have been in the path of the car, there is no excuse for deadly force.
This is like the case of Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a LA based journalist who was shot by a negligent discharge from ICE in October of 2025. They targeted him because of his reporting and boxed him in, then one of the agents accidentally, negligently shot him in the arm- the bullet ricocheted and hit a US marshal in the hand too. Parias was initially charged with assault on a federal officer, but all charges against him were dismissed by a judge after he cited DHS repeatedly missing court-mandated deadlines and refusing to release bodycam footage.
Parias was in the hospital less than a week before he was taken into ICE custody. In Adelanto he was mostly given Motrin for his pain. Motrin. For a gunshot wound. He’s received no physical therapy, he’s lost mobility in his arm and has only been seen by a nurse who gave him a sling. That’s it.
Parias has been held now without charge in ICE detention for over 330 days. They are holding him there pursuant to the Laiken Riley act, which mandates denial of bond to any undocumented person arrested or charged with a list of crimes, including minor property offenses like misdemeanor shoplifting.
Laiken Riley act is likely the same excuse ICE used to take Perez into custody.
So, to summarize, Parias is being held without bond under the Laiken Riley act because he was charged with assaulting federal officers. It doesn’t matter that the charges were dismissed by a judge, simply being charged the low standard set by the Laiken Riley act. Last September a federal judge in Boston ruled that detaining an individual solely on the basis of his prior arrest violates due process. Yet because of the supreme court ruling against nation-wide injunctions this Massachusetts decision doesn’t apply to Parias, who is locked up in California.
Again put yourself in his shoes. You’re targeted by feds because of your journalism. They accidentally shoot you, and to cover it up they charge you with assault. Your charges are dropped. Yet you’re held for almost a year now, without due process, because feds accused you of a crime after they accidentally shot you.
Families of five victims slain by ICE will be meeting with Sen Blumenthal in a livestreamed event Tuesday the 22nd at 3:30pm ET. More info here: https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/livestream-tuesday-blumenthal-and-robert-garcia-to-receive-public-testimony-on-fatal-shootings-by-federal-immigration-agents
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Lawlessness in our streets - that’s WTF!
This behavior by so called law enforcement PUTS US ALL IN DANGER ‼️
If you LIVE IN TX: VOTE ABBOTT OUT ☝️.
Go Talarico!
Go Hinojosa!