A man shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Texas earlier this month made his initial appearance in court on Tuesday, a day after federal prosecutors charged him with assaulting an officer.

Prosecutors filed the charge against 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez of Venezuela in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas on Monday, just over a week after he was shot by an ICE officer while making a DoorDash delivery. An affidavit filed by Department of Homeland Security special agent Rick Bazan alongside the criminal complaint alleges that the driver’s side mirror of Garces-Perez’s car struck the ICE agent in the torso when Garces-Perez attempted to flee immigration officials.

If convicted of assaulting an officer, Garces-Perez could face up to 20 years in prison, according to a statement from the Justice Department. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Howell on Tuesday set a detention hearing for Oct. 2.

An attorney for Garces-Perez, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, called the charge and the Tuesday hearing “a surprise,” adding in a statement to MS NOW, “Rather than provide the life saving medical care he needs, DHS and the government are playing games with his life.”

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for DHS referred MS NOW to the DOJ, which did not immediately respond.

The Sept. 20 shooting sparked anti-ICE protests and led to condemnation from the city’s Democratic mayor, Kirk Watson.

Garces-Perez’s attorney previously told reporters the shooting occurred after ICE officers in an unmarked car twice sideswiped his. She said he was taken to the hospital but then released into ICE custody with a bullet still lodged near his spine, and that he then returned to the hospital the following day.

The attorney said he entered the United States seeking asylum in 2024 and had a valid work permit, and that ICE issued a deportation order after he missed a hearing because the notification had been sent to a former address.

According to the DHS affidavit, immigration agents first searched Garces-Perez’s car in the immigration database after they saw it parked against a curb with its emergency lights on. They found the car had been registered to Garces-Perez and that a judge had issued a final order of removal, the affidavit states.

The affidavit says officers on the scene pulled Garces-Perez over and that he then requested to move his car to park but instead tried to take off, at which point the mirror allegedly struck one of the officers. The affidavit says only one of the two officers on the scene — not the one who was allegedly hit — was wearing a body camera, and it includes stills from the footage that appear to show the mirror approaching the officer’s torso. The officer who was wearing the body camera also spoke to investigators, according to the affidavit. It’s unclear why the officer who shot Garces-Perez was not wearing a body camera and why he did not speak to investigators.

After his car mirror struck the officer, Garces-Perez led the officers “on a high-speed chase through a commercial and residential area,” the affidavit alleges. The officer who shot Garces-Perez told the other officer — who was driving a separate car — that he shot him after Garces-Perez allegedly tried to strike him with his car, the affidavit states.

According to the affidavit, Garces-Perez admitted to investigators that he did attempt to flee in his car after initially being stopped, but he did not appear to admit that his mirror hit the officer. Instead, he said the investigators’ SUV struck his car, which spun around, and that he was then shot in the back through the back-right window of his car.

Garces-Perez has a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in San Antonio in his deportation case; however, it is unclear whether it will proceed as the government pursues its assault case against him.

David Noriega and Devyn Novikoff contributed to this report.

CORRECTION (Sept. 29, 2026, 5:13 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Howell set a date for Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez’s detention hearing. Howell set the date for the hearing on Tuesday, not Monday.

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