In just four days since they arrested him and took him from a hospital, federal officials have tried to place the Central Valley man shot by ICE agents into jails in at least five different counties across California, his attorney said Thursday.
“For me it’s like, are you trying to hide him?” the man’s fiancée said at a news conference, where she and the attorney alleged that federal law enforcement is holding Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández intentionally farther and farther away from both his Sacramento court hearings and his family in Patterson.
Mendoza Hernandez was charged with assault after an incident on April 7 about 40 miles south of Stockton, when authorities alleged he drove his car toward them, prompting agents to open fire. But Mendoza Hernández, his attorney, and another witness say agents fired at least one shot first, and that he was trying to drive to flee their gunfire.
He was hospitalized in Modesto with at least six gunshot wounds, according to his lawyer, and underwent surgery, but was taken into custody by the FBI earlier this week and now faces charges in federal court. Since then, his family has had increasing difficulty locating him, his attorney said.
Most recently, Mendoza Hernandez was held in Yuba County jail, according to inmate records from the sheriff’s department there on Wednesday. A spokesperson for Yuba County, in response to questions from Stocktonia, said “we do not determine” where a detainee of the U.S. Marshals Service is housed.
Attorney Patrick Kolasinski said Yuba County jail personnel told the family on Thursday morning that Mendoza Hernández was in transit to Nevada County, farther northeast of Sacramento, in what was his third jail transfer in just four days. But Mendoza Hernández never showed up in Nevada County records, and Kolasinski said he received word that Mendoza had instead been sent to Taft, at the far southern end of the valley, earlier this afternoon.
“He’s being treated like a sack of potatoes,” Kolasinski said.
- On Monday, Kolasinski told reporters that an FBI agent informed him that Mendoza Hernández would be booked at the Sacramento county jail. But Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández was only held there for three hours, at which point the Sacramento sheriff refused to keep him in custody. He was transferred to the Stanislaus County jail in Modesto on Monday evening, his attorney said, though Stanislaus county records never showed him as an inmate; the sheriff’s office did not respond to Stocktonia’s questions about him.
- By Tuesday, after his court hearing in Sacramento, Kolasinski says Mendoza Hernández was transferred to Yuba County, 100 miles away from his home in Patterson, where he remained until Thursday morning, when Yuba County sheriff’s personnel said he would be transferred to Nevada County, about 130 miles away.
- Kolasinski said he spent hours on Thursday scouring county jail websites looking for Mendoza Hernández, before learning he had actually been sent to Taft, in Kern County. That means he had been shipped more than 300 miles since the day before — and “pretty much as far as you can possibly move him from the courthouse,” Kolasinski said.
“It strikes me as very unusual,” that Mendoza Hernández has been moved around so much, Charles Weisselberg, an attorney and professor at UC-Berkeley School of Law, told Stocktonia.
Just as defendants in county courts may be held in their local jail awaiting trial, a federal criminal defendant may also be held. But federal authorities only have such holding facilities in Southern California, Weisselberg said. In other areas, including the federal court’s Eastern District of California which includes Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley, the federal system contracts with local county jails to hold people awaiting trial.
A representative for the U.S. Marshals told Stocktonia on Thursday that “there are parameters” set in the contracts between the U.S. Marshals and local sheriffs that determine which kinds of inmates and how many each county will agree to take on, so there are numerous reasons why Mendoza Hernández would be moved. “It could be for his care or could be just for anything,” the representative said.
“It’s possible a county could say ‘We’re not able to give him the medical care he needs,’” Weisselberg said.
But he added that moving from jail to jail could also further harm Mendoza Hernández’s physical state, as he would be likely held in both hand and leg shackles, made to sit upright for hours on the road. “All of it involves movement and adjustment and for someone who has been shot multiple times, it would potentially be very painful,” Weisselberg said.
“There’s no team making sure his bones are healing correctly,” Kolasinski said. “This man should be in a hospital.”
Mendoza Hernández first appeared in court Tuesday to face a charge of assault on an officer. A judge there ordered him released on bond, but the federal government sought a stay of his release. He is expected back in court on Monday.
