Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, a detainee who was shot at in an Immigration and Customs Facility in Dallas last week, died on Tuesday, his family and a spokesperson for Hispanic civil rights group LULAC announced.
Garcia-Hernandez had been on life support after a sniper shot at the facility from a rooftop in what authorities called a targeted act of violence towards federal immigration agents. However, all of the victims were detainees.
He had lived in the U.S. for two decades but did not have legal status. He was detained at the facility after being arrested on August 8 for driving under the influence.
In a statement, his wife Stephany Gauffeny described Garcia-Hernandez as a "good man, a loving father, and the provider for our family."
"We had just bought our first home together, and he worked hard every single day to make sure our children had what they needed," Gauffeny said. "His death is a senseless tragedy that has left our family shattered. I do not know how to explain to our children that their father is gone."
Garcia-Hernandez was a father of four kids, ages 3, 8, 12 and 14. The couple was expecting a fifth child — Gauffeny can give birth anytime now since she's 39 weeks pregnant, she said.
In an interview with NPR on Saturday, Gauffeny said, "before he got arrested … he had told me, 'OK, my next paycheck, you know, we're gonna go out and buy the baby all this stuff.'"
"And, you know, it never happened," she said, with tears in her eyes.
A second detainee, 37-year-old Norlan Guzmán Fuentes, from El Salvador, was also killed in the shooting. A third detainee, Jose Andres Bordones-Molina from Venezuela, was injured in the shooting.
The Department of Homeland Security or ICE did not immediately reply to a request for comment. In a statement to NPR on Saturday, ICE called the three victims "criminal illegal aliens."
According to authorities, the suspected shooter was Joshua Jahn, a 29-year-old who died of a self-inflicted wound. He sought to "terrorize" ICE agents, according to Nancy Larson, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
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