Wife of victim in Dallas ICE field office shooting found him shackled to hospital bed
- - Wife of victim in Dallas ICE field office shooting found him shackled to hospital bed
Rick Jervis and Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY September 28, 2025 at 4:34 AM
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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, was expected to be remanded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement from Tarrant County Jail in Arlington, Texas, over a DUI. But the couple hatched a plan that would keep them together even as the Trump administration stepped up deportation sweeps. Garcia started a visa process to stay in the United States permanently, had married Gauffeny and together they would raise four kids with a fifth baby on the way.
“He was feeling happy," Gauffeny said in an interview with USA TODAY of the Sept. 23 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. On Sept. 24, Garcia had just been transported from Arlington to the Dallas ICE field office when a gunman opened fire on the building and the van with an 8 mm bolt-action rifle, killing one detainee and seriously injuring Garcia.
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Garcia, 31, was one of three detainees injured or killed that day.
The next time Gauffeny saw him, on Sept. 24, Garcia was in a hospital bed at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.
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 feet were shackled together at the ankles. He was unconscious.
“It was just awful to see him like that,” she said.
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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.
Dallas County Medical Examiner's records indicate Guzman-Fuentes, 37, died; officials ruled his death a homicide.
All three men did not have proper documentation to be in the country and had criminal histories ranging from traffic offenses to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Garcia was arrested for driving under the influence on Aug. 8 and had spent six weeks in Tarrant County Jail in Arlington, Texas.
Local advocates have decried the lack of information on the migrant victims.
An attendee arranges flowers and candles during a vigil, for the detainee that was killed and two others that were critically injured from a shooting on Wednesday at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, outside the Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, U.S., Sept. 25, 2025.
Federal authorities said the suspect, Joshua Jahn, 29, was seen driving around the neighborhood near the facility at around 3 a.m. on Sept. 24 with a ladder perched on his truck. He then used the ladder to climb onto the roof a two-story building behind the facility, they said.
At around 6:30 a.m., Jahn allegedly began firing at the facility, hitting the building and sending rounds into a transport van filled with at least 10 detainees. Surveillance video obtained by local TV media shows detainees, their hands and feet shackled together, scrambling out of the van and into the facility during the barrage of gunfire.
At a press conference on Sept. 25, federal officials said that evidence found linked to the gunman showed that Jahn was targeting ICE agents – not the detainees – before fatally shooting himself. Several ICE and ATF agents ran into the van under fire to retrieve the injured detainees, they said.
“They were willing to put their lives on the line to pull detainees out of the transport van to get them to safety,” said Marcos Charles, ICE’s acting executive associate director of Enforcement and Removal Operations. “They are heroes.”
Miguel Angel Garcia Medina, 31, was one of the three detainees killed or wounded in the Sept. 24 attack at Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office shooting. Garcia, who is now in critical condition, is expecting his fifth child with his wife, Stephany Gauffeny.Garcia sought legal status with family in US
Garcia was one of the struck detainees in the van, his hands and feet shackled together. Around eight bullets tore into him, hitting his shoulder, stomach, tailbone and neck, causing him to have a massive stroke. He was ultimately pulled from the van and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Eric Cedillo, national legal advisor at the League of United Latin American Citizens, said, despite the DUI infraction, Garcia had been trying to get permanent residence the "right" way – through immigration proceedings – and was brought to the USA as a teen.
Gauffeny, who is a U.S. citizen, had sponsored him for an I-130 visa, which was initially approved, he said.
“He had been here for 20 years doing all the right things,” said Cedillo, who is advising the family.
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He added: “In any demographic, there’s good and bad: He wasn’t one of the bad ones. It’s unfortunate what happened to him and the other victims in this incredibly tragic event.”
Garcia was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and was brought to the U.S. when he was 13, along with three brothers, settling in Arlington, Texas, Gauffeny said.
The two met while freshmen at Sam Houston High School and began dating a few years after high school. They got married in 2016. Garcia helped raise two daughters Gauffeny was already raising and the pair had two more of their own – in total: three girls, ages 8 to 14, and one 3-year-old boy, Miguel Angel Garcia Jr.
Garcia was a stellar dad, Gauffeny said, spoiling the girls, attending daddy-daughter dances, helping with the 8-year-old daughter who is autistic and doting on Miguel, Jr. He’s a painter and contractor and the family’s sole breadwinner. In May, they bought their first home: a modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom house.
Garcia was elated that Gauffeny was pregnant with another boy, due in September, she said.
“He wanted that second boy,” she said.
Miguel Angel Garcia Medina, 31, was critically wounded in the Sept. 24 attack at Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office shooting that left another detainee dead. A Mexican national, Garcia has lived most of his life in the United States.
The DUI was his first offense and other charges of evading arrest were later dropped, Gauffeny 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.
Shackled in hospital
On the morning of Sept. 24, Gauffeny woke up to news of a shooting at the Dallas ICE field office. She knew he was scheduled to be transferred to ICE that morning but thought it too much of a coincidence for Garcia to be involved.
When he didn’t call, she grew worried. Then, at around 2 p.m., an ICE official called to inform her that Garcia had been shot at the facility and had been taken to Parkland. She rushed to the hospital with her sister and mother.
Gauffeny said she thought 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 happened 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 their children to bed each night, she said.
The family has started a GoFundMe page to help offset some of the medical costs. But it’s the image of his arms and feet shackled that has been hardest to shake, Gauffeny said.
“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.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dallas ICE shooting: Wife says victim was shackled in hospital bed
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