DOJ Charges Garces Perez With Assaulting a Federal Officer; DHS's Official Account of the Stop and CBP One Dispute Become Public

Opening

On September 29, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas filed a federal criminal complaint charging Wilber Rafael Garces Perez — the man ICE shot in the back on September 20 — with one count of assaulting, resisting, interfering with, and impeding a federal officer, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The complaint and accompanying testimony are the first detailed, sourced account of DHS’s version of the stop, including the warrant basis, removal-order status, and a direct dispute with the CBP One asylum-entry claim his attorney has made publicly.

What Happened / Key Facts

This was a civil-immigration enforcement stop triggered by a database hit on a prior removal order, not an arrest on a judicial criminal warrant. Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Rick Bazan, the complaint’s author, testified that HSI officers were “running license plates through a database” as part of a targeted operation and matched Garces Perez’s vehicle to a final order of removal already in ICE’s system. No reporting reviewed describes a judicial arrest warrant; the stop was an administrative-immigration apprehension following a license-plate-reader/database match, consistent with DHS’s own public claim that officers “confirmed a final order of removal had been issued by an immigration judge” before approaching him. This is DHS’s and the complaint’s characterization — it is not independently verified in this research pass against the underlying immigration-court record, and is reported here as the agency’s own account, typed as such.

Officers waited for him to leave a restaurant before approaching. Per Bazan’s testimony, agents located Garces Perez’s vehicle at a restaurant in a North Austin shopping center and deliberately waited until he left and got into his car to make contact “away from the business.” Garces Perez handed officers his Texas driver’s license on contact. The complaint itself records a dispute between the officers’ and Garces Perez’s accounts over when emergency lights were activated and whether an ICE vehicle struck his car before the shooting — i.e., the central contested fact is not resolved by the charging document, only restated as contested.

DHS’s official statement, attributed to Secretary Mullin, directly disputes the CBP One / lawful-entry and work-permit claims his attorney has made. DHS said Garces Perez “entered the country illegally under the Biden Administration,” “had no valid work permit, had no protective status, and had a final order of removal from a Department of Justice (DOJ) Immigration Judge.” The Texas Tribune’s review of the removal-order timeline reports Garces Perez received a removal order in August 2025 that his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, says “was sent to the wrong address,” and that a motion to reconsider was denied in July 2026. Separately, reporting establishes Garces Perez entered the United States legally through the San Ysidro, California port of entry in December 2023 and applied for asylum via the CBP One app — the claim his attorney has publicized — and that his work permit expired in December 2025. These two sets of facts are not mutually exclusive: a person can have entered lawfully via CBP One, held a now-expired work permit, and separately accrued a final removal order after a 2025 immigration-court proceeding he says he never received notice of. DHS’s public framing (“entered… illegally,” omitting the CBP One entry and the contested-notice removal order) and the attorney’s framing (“entered… legally,” omitting the subsequent removal order) are both selectively incomplete relative to the fuller timeline reported by the Texas Tribune. This entry states both agency and attorney positions as attributed claims, not as resolved fact.

DHS disputed the medical-neglect narrative in the same statement. DHS said it “does not and would not advise, nor be the authority on, a medical procedure for an illegal alien at a hospital,” and asserted Garces Perez is “receiving medical care around the clock, including pain medication,” having “slept on a bed a few hours after arriving at ICE’s detention facility” — disputing his legal team’s account (via the September 22 and 24 congressional letters) that he slept on the floor without pain medication.

No ICE incident report has been made public. Despite the task’s premise, no public DHS/ICE “incident report” document was located via search as of 2026-09-30; the public record instead consists of the federal criminal complaint against Garces Perez himself (which describes the encounter from the government’s investigative perspective), Bazan’s sworn testimony, and DHS’s press statement. This is recorded as a verified absence of a public incident report, not a research failure — consistent with the skill’s sourcing guidance that an ICE incident report on a shooting is unlikely to surface publicly.

Body-camera gap confirmed under oath. Bazan testified he did not interview the ICE agent who fired the shots — identified in court documents only by the initials “L.G.” — and could not explain to the defense why that agent was not wearing a body camera. This directly bears on the separate, parallel research ticket tracking ICE body-camera policy for this incident (not duplicated here).

Bond denied; custody status changed. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Howell ruled on September 30 that the government has probable cause to pursue the charge and that Garces Perez is a flight risk given family ties outside the country; bond was denied. He is now held in federal criminal custody rather than federal immigration/ICE detention, though his attorney said she was not informed which facility. Ten days after the shooting, the bullet remained lodged near his spine; his legal team says he faces risk of “permanent immobility and sepsis,” and that he was “wincing in pain” during the hearing.

Why This Matters

The federal charge against Garces Perez himself — filed the same week two separate congressional letters demanded his release and independent investigation — means the “accountability” track and the “prosecution” track are now running against each other: DOJ is prosecuting the shooting victim for resisting the agent who shot him, while Congress is demanding the shooting itself be investigated. DHS’s own statement supplies the government’s warrant/removal-order position in detail for the first time; it does not resolve, and in several places sharpens, the contested-fact dispute over what happened in the seconds before the shooting.

Research Gaps

• The underlying immigration-court record establishing exactly when and how the August 2025 removal order was entered and whether proper notice was given — not located via public search
• The identity of shooting agent “L.G.” beyond initials
• Outcome of the October 2, 2026 detention-related proceeding referenced in contemporaneous reporting
• Any confirmed DHS OIG or FBI/HSI-independent investigation status update

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