A STOCKTONIA IMMIGRATION REPORT
SACRAMENTO — The crucial moment lasted just a second and a half.
It was 6 a.m. on a Tuesday. Armed agents surrounded a black subcompact Toyota on a roadside just off Interstate 5, one officer leaning over onto the windshield.
The ICE agents had parked their vehicles immediately in front of and behind the car, a standard tactic in a traffic stop.
A billboard above the scene advertised the primary reasons a driver passing through might notice the little town south of Stockton: Starbucks, Carl’s Jr., a gas station. Traffic rolled by on the morning commute.
A man from El Salvador sat in the driver’s seat of the stopped Toyota, and refused to get out of the car. According to court records and his lawyer, he asked to call his fiancee.
Soon, the car would be in motion and the agents would open fire.
Above: Patterson, California. (Photo by Annie Barker/Stocktonia/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Nearly two weeks later, a federal judge in a Sacramento courtroom recounted watching video of that crucial moment, a second and a half, on repeat — “probably 10 or 12 times” — as he tried to decide whether the man, with six gunshot wounds, should be set free.
The moment highlights the competing narratives in the case of Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández, who was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents early the morning of April 7 in the Central Valley.
Federal investigators, prosecutors and ICE Director Todd Lyons say Mendoza Hernández is not only an immigrant targeted for deportation, but also a high-level gang member wanted for murder in El Salvador. They say he refused to cooperate with their commands, then tried to ram them with his Toyota. They say they had no choice but to fire “defensive shots.” They say he committed a federal crime — assault on an officer with a deadly weapon — that could put him in prison for 20 years.
Mendoza Hernández, his attorneys, eyewitnesses and other observers offer a different perspective. They say Mendoza Hernández moved his car not with the intent to strike anyone, but to flee agents who seemed bent on shooting him. They say he’s not a gang member, not a murderer, but the latest victim in a pattern of aggression by immigration agents who have barreled unchecked through communities across the country — and put civilians’ lives at risk by shooting into moving vehicles, this time pointing their guns in the direction of weekday commuter traffic.
ICE agents “don’t enforce their own use-of-force policy,” said Mike Fox, a legal scholar with the Cato Institute, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “They want to bully and harass people.”
A court hearing Monday in Sacramento did not explore the bigger questions in this case: whether the agents used excessive force; whether Mendoza Hernández had “weaponized his vehicle,” as ICE claimed; or even whether the agency’s claims about his criminal history were accurate. U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd was tasked only with sorting out the question of bail, and he said his decision would come down to that crucial 1½ second of grainy dashboard camera surveillance video.
Drozd said his analysis of the video led him to believe that Mendoza Hernández moved the steering wheel prior to the first gunshot. That detail made him a flight risk, the judge ruled, a determination that would keep him behind bars awaiting a trial that could still be years away.
By then, nearly two weeks after the shooting, the case had inflamed the Central Valley communities where both Mendoza Hernández and the ICE agents live and work. Protesters stood outside the federal courthouse in Sacramento with megaphones, demanding that the justice system “free Carlos!” and arrest the ICE agents instead. “Carlos is only alive because he understood he had to fight for his life when ICE tried to execute him,” one sign read.
The case had already raised concerns about how the criminal justice system treats people ensnared in immigration raids, in a country reeling from a string of high-profile killings by ICE agents.
And it had begun to tear a family apart.
ICE agents’ vehicles arrived at Mendoza Hernández’s home before dawn on April 7. They found a black Toyota in the driveway.
An FBI officer would later write that the agents already knew which car belonged to Mendoza Hernández because of “intelligence gathered prior to the operation.”
From their vehicles, the four agents watched the home, waiting for Mendoza Hernández to leave for work.
A camera was watching them too. Mendoza Hernández’s fiancee, Cindy — who asked to use only her first name for fear of immigration repercussions — said in a news conference the week after the shooting that she and Mendoza Hernández had a security camera outside their home. After the shooting, she reviewed the footage and saw agents waiting outside.
According to Cindy, Mendoza Hernández worked for a construction company that removes debris from structures in San Jose. It’s a two-hour drive from Patterson, a town of 25,000 — the same kind of commute countless others make every day from homes deep in the Central Valley to Bay Area jobs on the other side of the mountains.
At 6:40 a.m., Mendoza Hernández pulled out of the driveway. The agents followed.
They trailed him, heading west on Sperry Avenue, out of Patterson and toward the freeway. Just past Rogers Road, as he approached I-5, they pulled him over.
Mendoza Hernández had never interacted with federal agents before, but he had been stopped by local police a week earlier, Cindy says, for a cracked windshield.
California law prohibits local police from feeding information to ICE in most cases, but federal agents have access to interconnected databases that often are used by local law enforcement — such as when they check fingerprints for criminal records or scan a driver’s license for outstanding arrest warrants.
The criminal complaint against Mendoza Hernández says ICE agents had obtained a photo of him prior to the operation. After they pulled him over, an agent could identify his “big ears” on sight.
The ICE agents and Mendoza Hernández’s lawyers are all in agreement that Mendoza Hernández refused to get out of the car. “The conversation was going in circles,” one agent later told an FBI official.
As the seconds passed, traffic flowed by, a few feet away.
One eyewitness who spoke out after the shooting identified herself only as Christina, out of fear of harassment because she had already been targeted for being involved in the case. She was a few car lengths behind Mendoza Hernández’s Toyota at the street curb. It was “a weird spot” to pull someone over, she would say later, because it is near a busy freeway onramp.
As she approached the three cars stopped on the side of the road, Christina said she saw agents fanning out around the Toyota.
“One of the agents started hitting the front windshield,” she said.
“During the encounter, agents also informed Mendoza Hernández that they may have to break the window of his vehicle and extract him out of the vehicle,” an affidavit from the FBI investigator reads. After an officer shattered the front passenger window, the agents on the other side of the car — one leaning over the windshield and another at the driver’s window — pulled their weapons.
And then, the critical second and a half.
Video of the incident captured on the dashboard camera of a passing car, published by KCRA-TV on YouTube, shows a mountain of replays at this specific moment, as viewers try to parse the sequence of events.
The Toyota’s wheels turn left, then the car rocks forward before accelerating backward, curving out from between the agents’ cars.
The federal government’s case rests on the fact that the agent at the windshield was in the path of the vehicle when it lurched forward. “Based on my training and experience, and after reviewing relevant video evidence from the encounter, I believe that if Agent 1 had not moved, he/she would have been struck by Mendoza Hernández and would have suffered serious bodily injury or death,” the FBI agent wrote. “I believe agents discharged their firearms in response to Mendoza Hernandez driving his vehicle striking Agent 1.”
But Patrick Kolasinski, one of Mendoza Hernández’s lawyers, said his client was “adamant” that he was shot prior to moving the car, and that he drove in an attempt to flee further gunfire.
The video has no sound, so it is impossible to hear when the first agent fired at Mendoza Hernández.
Christina, the eyewitness, initially told CNN that the Toyota first began to move, and then she heard several gunshots in quick succession. In a news conference several days after the incident, she said reviewing the video from her own dashcam had brought back a clearer memory of the events. There was one gunshot, and then the Toyota moved, and then she heard the rest of the shots, she said.
The criminal complaint also notes one shot, a brief pause and more shooting. The complaint states that the car moved forward and the first shot happened “around this time,” not clarifying which occurred first.
In Monday’s court hearing, David Hitt, the federal public defender representing Mendoza Hernández, said if the car was in neutral and then shifted into reverse, it could have caused the rocking movement forward seen in the video.
But Drozd said the movement of the Toyota’s wheels to the left prior to the bump forward indicated Mendoza Hernández intended to flee the scene before he was shot, so even if he did not intend to harm the agents, he was “taking extraordinary measures to evade apprehension,” the judge said.
“His flight in this case was to save his own life,” Hitt argued, noting that the agents’ guns were already drawn.
After that first gunshot, Christina watched from her car as Mendoza Hernández’s Toyota swung out from between the ICE agents’ vehicles, the front passenger door crunching backward off its hinge. Agents fired at the car, and Christina says she “wanted to turn around, but there was nowhere to go.” She said that amid the gunshots, an officer “was pointing his firearm at the traffic.”
The officers were also pointing their firearms at each other. The criminal complaint notes that at least one of the ICE agents chose not to shoot because of a “crossfire situation.”
Mendoza Hernández was shot at least six times, according to Kolasinski, and drove over the median into oncoming traffic. He collided with another vehicle under a nearby overpass and rolled to a stop, at which point the ICE agents succeeded in handcuffing him. Kolasinski said one of his arms “had bones sticking out” when he was taken into custody.
The criminal complaint states that the ICE agents “rendered first-aid,” but Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández told him he did not receive any medical attention until paramedics arrived at the scene.
Mendoza Hernández was transported to Doctors Medical Center in Modesto, where he underwent four surgeries over several days and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit. Protests outside the hospital on the evening after the shooting, in which dozens demanded justice for Mendoza Hernández, resulted in multiple arrests for vandalism.
Above: Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández with fiancee Cindy, at a baby shower for their now-2-year-old daughter. (Photo courtesy of Patrick Kolasinski)
The FBI, which took over the case, kept two agents posted outside Mendoza Hernández’s hospital room.
According to Cindy, the man’s fiancee, these agents controlled when she was allowed to visit. Kolasinski says he asked one of the FBI officials whether Mendoza Hernández was detained, and the agent responded, “He’s detained by the hospital.”
During his legal visits to the hospital, Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández “could not sit up without assistance” and “could barely speak” because of a gunshot wound to his jaw.
Five days after the shooting, Cindy said doctors and nurses told her Mendoza Hernández needed more time to recover. The only question was whether he would be transferred out of the ICU into a different wing, where he would undergo physical therapy.
Kolasinski said three hours later, Mendoza Hernández was rolled out of his hospital room through a back door and transferred into an SUV. The hospital called Cindy to tell her Mendoza Hernández had been discharged, but when Kolasinski arrived at the hospital 15 minutes later, he said, Mendoza Hernández was already gone.
In a written statement, Doctors Medical Center did not directly address questions about Mendoza Hernández’s release, saying the hospital conducts discharges “taking into account the unique circumstances of each patient, carefully considering the need for continued inpatient care.”
“It was the absolute fastest hospital paper-processing you have ever seen in your life,” Kolasinski said. “This whole thing is not being done according to the rules.”
“He was wearing the hospital clothes. He didn’t even have his own clothes,” Cindy said.
For the next week, federal agents attempted to ferry Mendoza Hernández between jails and detention facilities in five different counties, hundreds of miles apart. He appeared, and then disappeared, from county inmate databases in Stanislaus and Yuba counties. Kolasinski said he heard that Mendoza Hernández had also been taken to Sacramento, Nevada and Kern counties, though he was never listed in their inmate records.
In response to questions from Stocktonia, a representative of the U.S. Marshals Service said Mendoza Hernández was likely moved around for “security reasons and classifications.”
“I’ve never had a situation where law enforcement tells me where someone is going to be, and then they’re not there,” Kolasinski said.
“It’s unusual,” Charles Weisselberg, a law professor at UC Berkeley said of Mendoza Hernández’s transitory detention. “It’s also a burden on him, his family and his attorney.”
In Monday’s hearing, Hitt, Mendoza Hernández’s public defender, claimed no county jail in the Central Valley would agree to take on an inmate who required such serious medical care.
He was wearing the hospital clothes. He didn’t even have his own clothes.”
Mendoza Hernández’S FIANCEE CINDY
Hitt said he was concerned Mendoza Hernández’s bandages were not changed often enough, and at some point, he would need to get his stitches and staples removed.
A week after the shooting, a magistrate judge ruled that Mendoza Hernández should be released because the complaint from the FBI did not convince her that Mendoza Hernández was a flight risk or a danger to the community.
But he was not released because a federal prosecutor asked for a stay, which required a second look from another judge.
He ultimately was booked into a detention center in California City, 270 miles away from home.
The complaint, filed the day he was arrested from the ICU, states that FBI investigators interviewed only the two ICE agents who did not shoot — investigators had “not been able to interview” either of the two agents who say they actually fired on Mendoza Hernández.
It also states that investigators had not reviewed any dashcam video from Mendoza Hernández’s car.
Christina, the eyewitness, said she had an appointment with FBI investigators prior to the release of the complaint but they never showed up. She was later interviewed by the FBI after the complaint had already been published.
The complaint also did not address Lyons’ claims that Mendoza Hernández was wanted for questioning in a murder case in El Salvador. Kolasinski says that’s wrong too; he says his client once faced trial in a murder case in El Salvador, but was acquitted. “There could not possibly be a warrant out for his arrest” in El Salvador Kolasinski said earlier this month.
No federal, state or local investigation has been announced into the actions of the ICE agents who shot Mendoza Hernández.
Above: Patterson, California. (Photo by Annie Barker/Stocktonia/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Mendoza Hernández appeared in the courtroom in Sacramento on Monday in a wheelchair, with his right arm in a large white cast and bandages on his left arm and jaw.
During the proceedings, he slumped to one side, his head resting on his hand. His lawyer, Hitt, argued that he could not be a flight risk because he no longer had the physical ability to flee.
But Drozd focused on the second and a half of video in which Mendoza Hernández’s wheels turned to the left prior to the car moving. He did not determine whether Mendoza Hernández intended to strike an agent with his car, but said there was enough evidence to suggest he intended to escape — and could be expected to do the same if released.
Hitt proposed an ankle monitor or house arrest, but Drozd was unmoved.
“If there are people with guns in our faces, what reaction are we supposed to have?” Cindy said after the hearing.
Outside the courthouse, a handful of protesters with megaphones decried the judge’s decision, accusing the judicial system of protecting the true perpetrators — the ICE agents — and criminalizing Mendoza Hernández, the man who was shot six times.
A couple of protesters argued with security guards, who insisted they remove a flag from the manicured bushes in front of the patio.
Then, slow raindrops began to fall, and everyone scattered.
The news cycle has acclimated to ICE shootings, Fox, the Cato Institute legal scholar, argues. “What is this, the 18th one of these?” he said in an interview.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two activists killed by federal agents during a surge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in January, might also have “come across as more sympathetic figures,” he said, because they were U.S. citizens rather than targets of immigration enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security has not issued a public statement about Mendoza Hernández’s shooting since the day it occurred, April 7. In response to questions from Stocktonia about the conflicting accounts of the incident, the department replied by sending a copy of the same statement, from Lyons, its director.
“As officers approached the car, the wanted gang member weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over,” Lyons wrote. “Following their training, our officers fired defensive shots to protect themselves, their fellow agents, and the public.”
The criminal complaint identifies them only as “Agent 1” through “Agent 4.” As in the shootings in Minneapolis, DHS has not released the identities of any of the agents involved.
No agent has been charged in any of these shootings, “so we’ve normalized this,” Fox said.
Because of Monday’s bond ruling, Mendoza Hernández could be in prison for months, or even years, Kolasinski said.
But even if Drozd allowed Mendoza Hernández to be released, he might have been sent to the same detention facility, Kolasinski said — but as a different type of detainee.
Mendoza Hernández is currently in U.S. Marshals’ custody at a detention center in California City that primarily houses immigrants in ICE deportation proceedings. Even if he is released on appeal or serves a sentence elsewhere if convicted of the assault charge, he could end up back in California City as an ICE detainee, Weisselberg, the UC Berkeley law professor, said.
“Once this case is done, then there’s the immigration case. And at this point, immigration cases are taking five to 10 years to resolve,” Kolasinski said.
Weisselberg said the judge’s refusal to release Mendoza Hernández could have inadvertent benefits for his family.
Court transcripts suggest Cindy and her family were prepared to use a house as collateral for her fiance’s bond.
“Many people would say ‘I’d rather sit in the federal jail than put all of these assets at risk,’” Weisselberg said.
If Mendoza Hernández had been released and then re-arrested by ICE, Weisselberg said he also would not have received sentencing credit toward a possible conviction in the assault case, meaning more time behind bars.
Cindy said she was unnerved by the appearance of ICE agents at an earlier court hearing.
“The ICE agents sat in front of us, right in front of the family,” she said. She recognized two of them, sitting just behind Mendoza Hernández’s wheelchair, as the officers who had shot him at the traffic stop.
“They were just over his shoulder,” she said.
Cindy also said a separate group of ICE agents was at the hearing, with the apparent goal of arresting Mendoza Hernández if he had been released on bond.
“I told him to prepare himself physically and mentally because the agents could pick him up today,” Cindy said before Monday’s hearing. “I told him, ‘Don’t sign anything; stay silent.’”
When asked whether a trial for Mendoza Hernández could occur in the fall, his lawyer said, “Yeah, the fall of some year.”
Before the hearing, Cindy, who works in a restaurant, said that with Mendoza Hernández gone, “it’s now up to me to pay the rent. I took days off work, but at some point, I’ll have to go back because I have to pay my bills.”
Cindy said she worries for her 2-year-old daughter, who is beginning to notice her father’s absence.
“My daughter looks for him in the house. She goes into the bedroom and searches around in the places where he used to be. I just tell her, ‘Soon he’ll be back,’” Cindy said Monday.
California City is a 4½-hour drive away. Cindy said that in the coming months, she will be able to visit Mendoza Hernández only once a week.
On weekdays, they’ll talk on the phone, but Cindy said attempts to keep Mendoza Hernández in their daughter’s life over the past few weeks have been imperfect, resulting in greater emotional pain.
“I put her on the phone for him to hear, and she recognized his voice. She got really excited and started saying, ‘Dada, Dada!’ But then she got confused and started looking around the room for him.” Cindy said both father and daughter were distraught.
On May 5, Mendoza Hernández will appear in court again, and Drozd will determine the next steps in the case. Then, there could be appeals.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a motion for a hearing on his medical care,” Weisselberg said. In California City, Mendoza Hernández is receiving ibuprofen for his pain, and his open wounds could be at risk of infection, his public defender said in court Monday.
Then, a potential trial. Then, a potential ICE detention.
“This is just the start of the battle,” Cindy said.
Photos above: Patterson, California. (Annie Barker/Stocktonia/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for Stocktonia and NEWSWELL.
