Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez appeared in court in a wheelchair Wednesday, the bullet still lodged in his spine.
Page T2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 3 October 2026
Man ICE officer shot in the spine charged with assaulting the officer who shot him
As it ran on the front
My nephew Dominic is two years into law school down in San Antonio, and he takes the degree so seriously that he'll stop you mid-sentence if you say "charged" when you mean "convicted," or the other way around. He was up for his mother's birthday, and I had the hood of the Buick open in the driveway because the fan belt's been complaining for a week, and since he's the one in the family who reads this kind of thing for a living now, I asked him something. Can a man who gets shot by a federal officer also be the one who ends up charged?
He said sure, those are two different questions, and asked me what I'd read.…
…(cont) So I told him. On September 20th, a man was shot in Austin, Texas, in what the Austin Police Department said was an incident involving an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. The hospital listed him "serious but stable." Dominic said that part's just the medical chart. It doesn't answer anything.
I kept going. The man's name is Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan national, and on September 30th the Justice Department charged him — not the officer who shot him, him — with assaulting a federal officer, in connection with a vehicle pursuit that ended in the shooting. Dominic put the wrench down for that one. He wanted to know if that charge came before or after anybody knew how bad the wound was. I didn't have that page in front of me. What I did have was this: this past Wednesday, Garcés Pérez showed up to that same court appearance in a wheelchair, because the bullet from September 20th is still lodged in his spine.
He asked if the man made bail. I told him I didn't have that part either, that it wasn't in what I'd read. He said that's usually the next line down in a story like this, and to send him the article when I found it.
He's out raking the side yard while I say all this, and he stops raking.
Here's the part I actually called him about. The officer who shot him has a name too — Christian Castro — and he isn't just standing around either. Dominic asked me what state. Minnesota, I told him. Then he asked what state the shooting happened in. Texas, I told him that too. He wrote both down on the back of his hand, which is apparently still how they take notes in law school in the year 2026.
So what I've got, laid out next to the raincoat on the porch rail where I can look at it straight: one man, shot, bullet still in him, charged with assaulting the officer who shot him. The other man, the one who did the shooting, answering his own charges, in a different state's courtroom, under a different docket number. Two dockets. Two defendants. One shooting.
Dominic had to get going — study group, he said, already running late — and he was most of the way down the driveway, keys out, when I called after him.
"Hey. Hold on a second. One more thing, since you're the lawyer in this family now."
Which case opened first — his, or the officer's?
“They shot the man, and then they charged the man — not the guy holding the gun, the guy holding the bullet. That's not justice, that's an insurance claim with a badge number, and the officer gets his own separate courtroom in a whole other state so the two stories never have to sit in front of the same jury. A bullet in somebody's spine isn't a defense exhibit, it's a man's nervous system, and they're running two clocks on it like it's paperwork.”
“Look, the assault charge is about the vehicle pursuit, period — officers get to defend themselves when a stop goes sideways, that's not complicated. And the fact that Officer Castro is also facing his own charges actually proves the system holds everybody accountable, it's not covering for anybody — wait, did I just say the system is defending him and prosecuting him at the same time? That's — that's two different systems, actually, let me start over.”
The receipts
· Man in ‘serious but stable condition’ after shooting in Austin involving ICE officer: Officials from the morgue, 20 Sep 2026
· ICE agent appears in Minnesota court to face charges in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Venezuelan national shot by ICE officer in Austin charged with assaulting federal officer from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.