Dallas shooting victim shackled to bed
Wife decries treatment of ICE facility attack victim
By: Rick Jervis
and Eduardo Cuevas
USA Today
DALLAS - The last time Stephany Gauffeny spoke to her husband, she was encouraged by the excitement in his voice. he was coming home.
..... Miguel Angel Garcia Medina, 31, expected to be remanded to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. he had been arrested August 8 [2025] for driving under the influence and spent six weeks in Tarrant County Jail in Arlington, Texas.
..... But the couple devised a plan that would keep them together even as the Trump administration stepped up deportation sweeps. Garcia had married Gauffeny and started a visa process to stay in the United States permanently. Together they would raise four kids with a fifth baby on the way.
..... "He was feeling happy," Gauffeny told USA Today of the September 23 [2025] phone call. "He knew he would end up with ICE, but we had a plan to keep him in the U.S."
..... That plan imploded the following day. Garcia had just been transported from Arlington Texas, to the Dallas ICE field office September 24 [2025] when a gunman opened fire on the building and the van with an 8 mm bolt-action rifle, killing one detainee and injuring two others.
..... Garcia was one of the struck detainees in the van, his hadrons and feet shackled together. Around eight bullets tore into him, hitting his shoulder, stomach, tailbone and neck, casuist him to have a massive stoke. He was ultimate pulled form the van and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.
..... The next time Gauffeny saw Garcia, he was in a hospital bed.
..... His face was swollen. Tubes snaked down his throat. Staples closed a scar across his head. Dried blood dappled his face, neck and bedsheets. his arms were restrained to the bed and his fee were shackled together at the ankles. He was unconscious.
..... "It was just awful to see him like that," she said.
..... At a news conference on September 25, [2025] federal officials said evidence indicated that the gunman was targeting ICE agents - not the detainees - before fatally shooting himself.
..... However, all three victims were detainees. A senior Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, identified the other two victims as Jose Andres Bordones-Molina of Venezuela and Norlan Guzman-Fuentes of El Salvador. The Dallas County Medical examiner's records indicate Guzman-Fuetes, 37, died; officials rule his death a homicide.
..... None of the three men had proper documentation to be in the country and all had criminal histories ranging from traffic offenses to aggravated assaults with a deadly weapon.
..... Garcia was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and was brought to the United States when he was 13 along with three brothers, settling in Arlington, Gauffeny said.
..... The couple met as freshman at Sam Houston High School. They got married in 2016. Garcia helped raise Gauffney's two daughters form a previous relationship and the pair had two more of their own, totaling three girls, ages 8 to 14, and a 3-year-old boy.
..... Eric Cedillo, national legal adviser at the League of United Latin American Citizen and an adviser to the family, confirmed that Garcia had been brought to the United States as a teen.
..... Despite the DUI infraction, Garcia had been trying to get permanent residence the "right" way - thorough immigrant proceedings, Cediillo said. Gauffeny, who is a U.S. citizen, had sponsored him for an I-130 visa, which was initially approved, Cedillo said.
..... "He had been here for 20 years doing all the right things," he said.
..... He added: "in any demographic, there's good and bad: He wasn't one of the bad ones."
..... Garcia is a stellar father, Gauffeny said, spoiling the girls, attending daddy-daughter dances, helping with the 8-year-old daughter, who has autism, and doting on his son. He is a painter and contractor and the family's sole bread-winner. In May, [2025] they brought their first home: a modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom house.
..... He was elated that Gauffeny was pregnant with another boy, due any day now, she said.
..... "He wanted that second boy," she said.
..... The DUI was his first offense and other charges of evading arrest w4ree later dropped," Gaufeny said. They were hopeful that his ties to the community and growing family would keep him from being deported.
..... "Our expectation was that he was going to be allowed to stay here with us," she said.
..... On the morning of September 24, [2025] Gauffeny woke up to news of a shooting at the Dallas ICE field office. she new Garcia was scheduled to be transfered to ICE that morning but thought it too much of a coincident for him to be involved.
..... When he didn't call, she grew worried. then, at around 2 PM., and ICE official called to inform her that Garcia had been shot. She rushed to the hospital with her sister and mother.
..... Gauffeny said she through maybe her husband had just been shot in the arm and would be awake and recovering. she was shocked by the grisly scene that greeted her when she walked into the hospital room. She started to cry.
..... Since then, Gauffeny said she's received scant details on what happens that day. Hospital staff filled her in on his injuries. He's had at least one surgery and will likely need more.
..... But the person lying in bed with the swollen face and the tubes and the arms and feet shackled to the bed didn't at all resemble the husband who just recently helped put tier children to bed each night, Gauffeny said.
..... The image has been hard to shake.
.... "They're not respecting him as a human being," she said. "He can't even move. It really feels unfair the way he's being treated when he's been (the victim) of a hate crime."