AFTER AN UNEXPECTED TRANSFER from the hospital to federal custody, a man shot by ICE agents in the Central Valley last week appeared in federal court on Tuesday to face charges of assault on an officer, but a Sacramento judge ruled that he should be released on bond.
The federal government asked for a stay of that order, so he will remain in custody for 48 hours, pending a decision by another judge, his attorney said.
The court hearing capped a whirlwind of developments in a tumultuous case that began when a traffic stop by Immigration and Custody Enforcement agents devolved into a barrage of gunfire off Interstate 5.
Earlier Tuesday, the Justice Department released a newly unsealed criminal complaint that accused the man driving the car, Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández, of assault on a federal officer with a deadly weapon. The weapon in this case was his vehicle.
Authorities have alleged that Mendoza Hernández attempted to ram agents with his car, which prompted them to open fire. But Mendoza Hernández and an eyewitness say an agent shot him first, and he drove in an effort to flee further gunfire.
Mendoza Hernández appeared in the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon in a wheelchair.
“I think we got a very fair hearing,” his lawyer, Patrick Kolasinski, told reporters outside the Sacramento courthouse. The judge “said she didn’t see any indication that Carlos is a danger or that he intentionally hit anyone.”
Kolasinski noted that even if a subsequent judge finalizes Mendoza Hernández’s release, ICE agents are expected to arrest him immediately, and he would be “fighting both cases at once,” in an attempt to avoid both deportation and prison.
In documents filed last week and released Tuesday by the Justice Department, an FBI agent alleges Mendoza Hernández refused to comply with agents during the traffic stop on April 7, then “drove his vehicle toward officers in a manner that would have caused serious bodily injury or death” had the officers not gotten out of the way.
“The official narrative in the complaint doesn’t match what we have seen from the video and heard from witnesses, but that is a topic for a later hearing or trial.”
Patrick Kolasinski, attorney for Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández
The court documents note that the claims are based on the recollection of two agents who did not fire their weapons, and that the FBI agent had not been able to interview the two agents who did shoot. The reports also state that Mendoza Hernández said the incident was recorded on his dashboard camera, but the FBI had not yet searched the car to find the camera.
Kolasinski has said his client is “adamant” that an officer shot him before he moved his vehicle.
“The official narrative in the complaint doesn’t match what we have seen from the video and heard from witnesses,” Kolasinski said in an email Tuesday, “but that is a topic for a later hearing or trial.”
The shooting last week in Patterson, about 40 miles south of Stockton, is the latest high-profile case of immigration agents inside the country using deadly force as they pursue a nationwide immigration crackdown.
While officials with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have not commented on the incident or responded to questions since the day of the shooting, the documents offer the first clear picture of the federal government’s stance in the case.
The FBI’s account
In an affidavit filed under seal April 9 in support of an arrest warrant and criminal charges, FBI agent Brian Toy writes that four federal agents sought to arrest Mendoza Hernández early on the morning of April 7.
The affidavit does not identify any of the agents, instead describing them as “Agent 1” through “Agent 4.”
Toy writes that the allegations are based on interviews with Agents 3 and 4. “Agents 1 and 2 discharged their firearms at Mendoza Hernandez,” he writes. “At this time, the FBI has not been able to interview Agents 1 and 2.”
Toy said the agents began by surveilling the man’s home in Patterson, then followed him as he left home and drove his car, a black Toyota C-HR, toward Interstate 5.
“The purpose of the operation was to locate and arrest Mendoza Hernández because he is an illegal alien with no status in the U.S.,” Toy said.
Toy said that agents stopped Mendoza Hernández on the side of the road, and instructed him to get out of the vehicle.
The affidavit says that the agents did not wear face masks — which have become a ubiquitous element of the ICE uniform — and that Mendoza Hernández never stated “that he did not believe the officers were who they presented themselves to be.”
The affidavit first describes the incident based on the account of Agent 4. That agent recalled that another agent had “instructed Mendoza Hernandez ‘a lot of times’ and that the conversation was going in circles.”
“Agent 3 broke the front passenger window of Mendoza Hernandez’s vehicle,” the affidavit states, intending to remove Mendoza Hernández from the car. “At around the same time, Mendoza Hernandez placed the vehicle in drive moving the vehicle forward and to the left approximately one foot, hitting Agent 1.”
Dashboard camera video from a passing car, previously published by KCRA-TV, shows agents surrounding the car, but the film contains no audio and is shot from the driver’s side of the car, so the broken passenger window is not visible and it’s not clear when agents broke the car window or fired their weapons.
That video shows one agent leaning against the front fender of the car with his body draped over the driver’s window. Then, the car lurches slightly before stopping.
Agent 4’s account appears to match eyewitness accounts that agents fired one shot early, but alleges this shot happened after the car moved.
“After the breaking of the window, Mendoza Hernandez drove his vehicle to the front left, striking Agent 1 and Agent 3’s vehicle. It was around this time that Agent 1 discharged his/her firearm,” the FBI agent wrote. “There was a brief pause from the shooting as Mendoza Hernandez appeared to have been shot and stopped.”
After this, the affidavit describes the same scene as shown in the video: the car shifting into reverse, hitting the agents’ pickup truck, then pulling forward in an attempt to flee.
“This time both Agents 1 and 2 discharged their firearms,” the FBI agent said. Agent 4 did not fire, specifically because agents were positioned in “a crossfire situation.”
The affidavit also cites the recollection of Agent 3, who broke the passenger’s window and reached inside. But this account describes Mendoza Hernández only as backing the vehicle up before pulling forward, and does not describe the first gunshot.
After pulling forward and taking the majority of the gunfire, Mendoza Hernández then “continued driving, jumped the center median, and entered the opposite lanes of traffic … collided with another vehicle, struck a guardrail, and came to rest.” At this point, the FBI agent said, “Officers took Mendoza Hernandez out of the vehicle and rendered first-aid.”
But Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández recalls being handcuffed by the agents while he could “see his bones sticking out” of his arm, and was not offered medical aid until an ambulance arrived at the scene.
The agent notes only one interaction with Mendoza Hernández after hospitalization.
“During his treatment at the hospital, Mendoza Hernandez provided spontaneous statements indicating that the incident was recorded on a dash camera,” the affidavit states. “The FBI has not yet conducted a search of Mendoza Hernandez’s C-HR to locate a dash cam.”
A circuitous path to jail, charges
Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández was shot six times, including to the jaw and the arm, and underwent four major surgeries in the ICU at Doctors’ Medical Center in Modesto in the week following the shooting.
At a news conference Monday, Mendoza Hernández’s fiancé, Cindy — who has chosen not to share her last name — said he was discharged into FBI custody three hours after a nurse told the family he would not be ready to leave the ICU for at least another day.
In an email late Monday night, Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández had been transported to the Sacramento County jail, but he was refused there and sent instead to the Stanislaus County jail, where he is detained in a hospital bed in the medical ward.
As of Tuesday morning, the Stanislaus County sheriff’s website showed the names of people who had been booked into custody on both Monday and Tuesday, but it did not show an entry for Mendoza Hernández. The sheriff’s office did not respond to Stocktonia’s inquiry about whether Mendoza Hernández was in custody.
Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández is worried about the risk of infection in jail because he still has open wounds, including a long gash on his arm held together with staples.
The shooting is the latest among many cases of ICE agents using 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 Renée Good, a U.S. citizen shot while trying to drive away from agents in Minneapolis. In Good’s case, agents initially said she had tried to run them over, but video in the case later contradicted those accounts.
In the days following the Patterson shooting, other accounts have raised questions about the ICE agents’ description of the incident — including two dashboard camera videos from passing vehicles, an eyewitness statement and Mendoza Hernández’s own claims.
As soon as Mendoza Hernández woke up from surgery, Kolasinski said, he began recalling the events of the shooting, and told Kolasinski that he moved his vehicle only in an attempt to flee after he had already been shot.
An eyewitness to the incident — Christina, who asked not to use her last name because she had received threats after speaking about the case — provided a second dashboard-camera video and said she remembers hearing a gunshot before Mendoza Hernández moved his car. She also said she was afraid the ICE agents would shoot into oncoming traffic, endangering the public on their morning commutes.
Christina’s lawyer, Roberto Serrato, told reporters that Christina was supposed to meet with FBI investigators Monday, but the agents never showed up.
If Mendoza Hernández is convicted of assault on a federal agent, the affidavit states that he could be sentenced to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Kolasinski said his client is contemplating his future.
“He holds no ill will to those who are accusing him, and the only thing he is focused on is coming home to his family,” Kolasinski said. “That is his primary focus, and he is struggling emotionally as he contemplates whether he will see them again.”
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.
