Austin City Council Candidate Misael Ramos Arrested on Riot Charge Tied to ICE-Shooting Protest

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and special agents arrested Misael Ramos, a candidate for Austin City Council District 1, on the morning of September 26, 2026 in the 2400 block of Manor Road on a Class B misdemeanor charge of engaging in a riot. DPS said the arrest executed an outstanding warrant tied to Ramos’s conduct at a September 20 protest against the ICE shooting of Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan delivery driver shot by a federal immigration agent in Austin (2026-09-20–ice-agent-shoots-venezuelan-delivery-driver-austin-hsi-fbi-investigate) — DPS alleges Ramos was captured on camera taking construction barricades and sandbags and attempting to obstruct traffic during that protest. He was booked into Travis County Jail around 9:30 a.m. and released the same afternoon on a $1,000 personal bond.

Ramos and his supporters describe the arrest as political retribution against his council candidacy. That characterization is theirs, not an established finding; DPS’s account (the warrant, the September 20 conduct alleged) and the retribution framing are two competing accounts of the same arrest, and this entry holds both rather than resolving between them. The arrest connects directly to the underlying Garcés Pérez shooting this timeline already documents: a bystander shooting by a federal agent produced both a protest and, six days later, a criminal charge against one of that protest’s participants who is also a sitting candidate for local office.