The man shot by ICE agents last week in the Central Valley has been released from the hospital directly into FBI custody, but the future of his detention — and of the immigration enforcement effort that led to the shooting— remain unclear, his lawyer said Monday.
The abrupt hospital release and subsequent arrest of Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández left his family concerned for his health.
“We don’t know where Carlos is or what his condition is like right now,” his attorney, Patrick Kolasinski said.
It also raised new questions about the shooting on April 7, in which multiple agents fired into the man’s vehicle after pulling him over near Interstate 5 in Patterson, south of Stockton.
As with other high-profile shootings by immigration agents in recent months, federal officials claimed agents fired defensive shots, but video and eyewitness accounts have contradicted those claims. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also said the man was wanted in connection with a crime in El Salvador, a claim his attorney said is contradicted by court records.
Mendoza Hernández had been in the intensive care unit at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto and had come out of his fourth surgery less than 24 hours ago, Kolasinski said. He was shot six times, including in the jaw, and in the arm, to the point his “bones were sticking out.”
Mendoza Hernández could not sit up without assistance, much less walk, his attorney said. “He was in no condition to be released, and all of a sudden the hospital magically decided that he was ready to go and released him,” Kolasinski said.
Kolasinski had said last week that when he visited his client in the hospital, the man was not in law enforcement custody at the time. On Monday, he alleged that the hospital alerted the FBI of the release prior to notifying Mendoza Hernández’s family.
Doctors Medical Center, in response to questions from Stocktonia, did not directly address whether Mendoza Hernández was released to the FBI or his condition at the time of release. The hospital discharges patients “taking into account the unique circumstances of each patient, carefully considering the need for continued inpatient care,” a hospital representative wrote. “Discharge plans are tailored to provide for the safety and continued health journey of the patients.”
In a news conference on Monday evening, Mendoza Hernández’s fiancé, Cindy, who chose to share only her first name, said he was discharged into FBI custody just three hours after a nurse said he would need to stay in the ICU for at least another day.
Kolasinski said he worried Mendoza Hernández would be at risk of serious infection in a jail environment, because he still has open wounds from his surgery. He said an FBI special agent informed him that Mendoza Hernández would be transported to the Sacramento county jail, but the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office told him Carlos will not be housed in a county jail, leaving Kolasinski, as well as Mendoza Hernández’s loved ones, in the dark about his whereabouts.
“We don’t know if he was transported by ambulance or just a plain car. We don’t know if there was a medical emergency on the side of the road. We don’t know if he is in a hospital, in a different jail, or being whisked off to some other sort of detention,” Kolasinski wrote in an-email to reporters Monday afternoon.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office did not answer Stocktonia’s inquiry about Mendoza Hernandez’s custody. The FBI forwarded Stocktonia’s request for comment to the United States Attorney’s Office and has not yet filed a complaint listing any charges.
Shifting story of shooting
On the morning of April 7, ICE agents pulled over Mendoza Hernández just off I-5 about 40 miles south of Stockton, a traffic stop that soon escalated as agents opened fire.
ICE Director Todd Lyons wrote in a statement that day that Mendoza Hernández was a gang member wanted in connection to a murder in El Salvador. Lyons said agents had fired their guns because Mendoza Hernández “weaponized his vehicle,” attempting to run them over.
But other accounts — including two dashboard camera videos from passing vehicles, an eyewitness statement and Mendoza Hernández’s claims — all raised questions about the sequence of events.
Video published by KCRA-TV, which the station said was captured on a dashboard camera at the scene of the shooting, shows a vehicle at a roadside, flanked by armed agents who appear to try to reach inside.
In the video, several agents surrounding the car appear to have their handguns already drawn — but the video has no audio, so it’s unclear when the shooting begins.
The car shifts into reverse and begins backing up. As it does, a piece of debris from the car flies into the air. After that, the car strikes an unmarked pickup truck sitting behind it on the roadside, then pulls forward as agents spread out and drives over the median into a lane with oncoming traffic.
After meeting with Mendoza Hernández in the hospital, Kolasinski said his client was “adamant” that ICE agents opened fire before the man began backing his vehicle up. “He moved backwards because he was being shot at,” Kolasinski said last week. “He fled in a panic because he was being fired on.”
Over the weekend, a witness of the incident backed up Mendoza Hernández’s description, saying she heard one gunshot before the car began to move, and then another five or six in quick succession.
In a news conference on Saturday, the bystander witness said the ICE agents put her and dozens of other civilians on their morning commutes in danger, by pointing their guns at traffic.
While the FBI says it is investigating the shooting, neither the bureau nor immigration officials have indicated any timeline for the investigation, and have not responded to questions about when they will release the names of the agents involved.
The shooting was part of a pattern in recent months of ICE agents using their firearms during traffic stops. A Wall Street Journal investigation found 13 instances of ICE agents shooting at cars from July 2025 to January 2026, including the killing of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen shot while trying to drive away from agents in Minneapolis.
In the Good case, Department of Homeland Security officials also justified the use of deadly force, claiming that Good weaponized her vehicle, until video evidence was released that contradicted the narrative.
Client’s fate unclear
Federal authorities have not commented publicly on the case since their initial statement late on April 7.
In response to questions from Stocktonia about the contradicting claims of both the shooting victim and an eyewitness, a Department of Homeland Security official responded by sending a copy of the same statement.
In it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons called Mendoza Hernández “an 18th Street Gang member” and said agents had tried to stop him because he was “wanted in El Salvador for questioning in connection to a murder.”
The man and his family vehemently denied any gang ties. Mendoza Hernández had been acquitted of murder in El Salvador prior to migrating to the United States, his attorney said last week, showing documents he said were related to the case. “There could not possibly be a warrant out for his arrest” in El Salvador, as ICE claims, Kolasinski said.
Although Kolasinski had previously said Mendoza Hernández was not in the custody of any law enforcement agency, in a Monday evening news conference, he said that he had previously seen both an FBI agent and two Stanislaus County sheriff’s deputies stationed outside the man’s room.
The shooting, Kolasinski said, left his client with significant injuries including a gunshot wound to the face and a long wound on his arm which was sealed with staples. He said the man was told on Sunday that he would need several more days in the hospital, and that hospital staff called the man’s fiancee to say he was staying in the intensive-care unit and would receive physical therapy.
Now that Mendoza Hernández has left the hospital, Kolasinski says he suspects his client will be charged with attempted assault of a federal officer, or something related.
In the coming days, Kolasinski says the FBI will file charges against Mendoza Hernández. The attorney also raised the possibility of a legal fight over whether the hospital release violated his client’s medical privacy rights.
“This is a hot mess,” he said.
