Decibel

What's Happening With ICE In Austin?

Clip | 7m 7sVideo has Closed Captions

Explaining the terms surrounding ICE in the Wilber Perez case.

10/2/2026

Decibel

What's Happening With ICE In Austin?

Clip | 7m 7sVideo has Closed Captions

Explaining the terms surrounding ICE in the Wilber Perez case.

For the past week, news and headlines across Texas have talked about Wilbur Garces Perez, a Venezuelan man shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. While the case unfolds, various terms about immigration enforcement have come up: 287g agreements, ERO, CBP-1, SIU. Let’s break down what these mean and how they’re impacting people in Rundberg and Austin.

10/2/2026

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Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders

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- If you've watched the news this week, you've probably heard the name WIlber Garces Perez.

- WIlber Rafael Garces Perez.

- WIlber Garces Perez.

- Garces Perez.

- [Reporter] Graces Perez.

(Wilber speaking in Spanish) - [Officer] Okay.

- You may know that Perez was shot in the back by ICE agents on Sunday, September 20th.

You may know that he's the third person that ICE has shot in Texas.

But you've maybe heard a lot of terms that you don't know.

- HSI.

- ERO.

- SIU.

- CBP-One.

- So let's break down what these terms mean and how they're impacting people in Rundberg and across Austin.

So you're probably familiar with ICE, and you probably know that it stands for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, but there's a lot of other acronyms that get used too.

In the case involving WIlber Perez, APD released this dash cam footage.

A man can be seen wearing a vest that says ERO.

There's also HSI and CPB, but what are they and how are they different than ICE?

- Both are sub-entities of the Department of Homeland Security.

- [Host] Denise Gillman is the co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, and she explains the differences between these agencies.

- So CBP, Customs and Border Patrol, is mostly down at the border.

ICE is what you think of more as the interior inside the United States immigration enforcement body, and it has several different sub-components still.

- ERO and HSI are branches of ICE, but they do different things.

HSI stands for Homeland Security Investigations.

They focus on criminal cases like trafficking, narcotics, and cyber crime.

ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations.

This branch focuses on finding and detaining people who are here undocumented.

And they manage a program that you've probably heard a lot about recently, 287(g) Agreements.

287(g) is a program that lets state and local law enforcement work with federal immigration officials.

It's part of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The name comes from the section of the bill that it's in, 287(g).

- Normally, local law enforcement is not really intended to be involved in immigration enforcement.

So 287(g) agreements allow for state and local entities to become involved in immigration enforcement in collaboration with the federal government.

- So while 287(g) agreements are optional at the federal level, Texas' law makes them mandatory.

Texas Senate Bill eight requires county sheriffs to enter into a 287(g) agreement with ICE or face legal penalties.

There are three types of 287(g) agreements, the task force model, the jail service model, or the warrant service officer program.

The first two only kick in when someone has been booked into jail.

Deputized officers can serve administrative warrants, but the warrant service officer program lets deputized officers question people during regular police work, like traffic stops.

Williamson County has signed the warrant service officer program.

Bastrop and Caldwell have a task force agreement.

Travis and Hayes County haven't signed an agreement as of this reporting.

They have until the end of the year to sign one.

CBP-One.

This has come up a lot in the last week with the Perez case that he was let into the country under a CBP-One visa, but what is that?

For this one, we have to travel back to 2020.

The Biden administration expanded an existing customs and border patrol app to let migrants seeking entry into the US schedule appointments at border points of entry.

By 2023, this was the main way asylum seekers could enter the country.

The Biden administration issued a ruling that anyone who entered without using CBP-One would not be granted asylum.

So how did it work?

If applicants were able to get a slot, they would be vetted by federal officials.

People granted a CBP-One visa were allowed to enter and work in the United States.

When Trump returned to office in 2024, he ended the program and revoked the status of anyone who had used the app to enter the country.

Is this the first incident we're seeing with ICE in Austin?

No.

- Okay.

Come on.

- This is the first time that we know of that ICE agents have shot and wounded someone in Austin.

The residents and community members have been sounding the alarm for months now about immigration enforcement in the community.

Plus there's been an increase in the number of arrests and detentions across the state.

ICE divides the state by area of responsibility.

Austin and much of central Texas falls under the San Antonio AOR, and this area has seen massive increases in street arrests since August.

It's currently third in the nation.

According to data from the Deportation Data Project, arrests jumped from 662 in January of last year to over 3,000 arrests in July of this year.

That's a more than 300% increase.

That means there's also a huge influx of cases to immigration court.

Gilman says there are not enough attorneys to take on all of these cases, so many people have to defend themselves in court and they can be very difficult cases to win.

- So on any given day, there might be 600 cases having master calendar hearings in immigration court in San Antonio.

There are not enough attorneys paid or certainly free or low cost to represent that kind of number of cases.

You have 0.001 chance of winning a case in immigration court without an attorney right now.

Even with an attorney because of numerous actions that have been taken under this administration, asylum grant rates are down to about 7%.

- Several arrests in Rundberg have made headlines.

A family who was detained after a traffic stop by Dobie Middle School, a mother who was deported after she called 911 during a domestic disturbance, a teacher who was arrested in the middle of the school year.

- [Group Together] Free Luis Fernando, Free Luis Fernando.

Free Luis Fernando.

- And a high school senior who was picked up after a shift at a fast food restaurant.

So what now?

Local leaders have called for an end to 287(g) agreements and for ICE to no longer be involved in traffic stops, but this is still a developing story and changes that are still constantly happening with immigration enforcement here and across Texas.

If there's anything you have questions about or you want to know more about, let us know in the comments and we'll explain more and we'll keep following the story as it happens.