Attorney Patrick Kolasinski said federal prosecutors have told him that Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez is not under arrest, raising questions about why he was the target of an enforcement action. No one under that name from El Salvador is in ICE detention, according to the agency’s online detainee locator. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not responded to inquiries about Kolasinki’s statements.

Tuesday’s encounter was among a string of shootings during the Trump administration’s aggressive push to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, about which questions have been raised with federal immigration officials.

DHS has said ICE agents fired defensive shots at Mendoza when he tried to drive into them after he was pulled over on Tuesday. Officials said they were conducting an enforcement stop targeting Mendoza, 36, in Patterson, a city about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. They described him as a suspected gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in connection to a murder.

Kolasinski told reporters that Mendoza was having difficulty speaking because he was shot in the jaw, but that he said he was never a member of a gang. Kolasinski said previously that his client has been stopped for minor traffic infractions but has no criminal record in the U.S. and is not the subject of an arrest warrant in El Salvador, where he was acquitted of murder.

Kolasinski said that the FBI was leading the investigation of the shooting and that ICE was not currently involved in Mendoza’s case. The Department of Justice referred inquiries to the FBI, which said it couldn’t comment on an active investigation.

Kolasinski said that agents fired on Mendoza while the car was stopped and he drove away to flee the gunfire. “He fled in a panic because he was being fired on,” Kolasinski said. “He was not trying to hurt anyone … he was just scared he was going to die.”

According to a Oct. 25, 2019 court document from a judge in El Salvador, Mendoza, who was 29 at the time, was acquitted after being accused of murder and ordered immediately released. The document lists 10 others who were convicted of various crimes from aggravated robbery to murder, and mentions at least one of them was a member of the 18th Street Gang. But there is no mention of Mendoza belonging to a gang or being accused of carrying out gang activity in the document.

In the California ICE shooting, dashcam footage obtained by KCRA-TV shows three officers standing around a vehicle stopped on the side of a road. One of the officers appears to be touching the driver-side window when the car begins to back up and turn, hitting a vehicle behind it. At least two of the agents have weapons drawn, pointing at the car. The driver then pulls forward toward where the men are standing and turns sharply, driving over the roadway median.

The video has no sound and it’s unclear when the shots were fired or if words were said.

Mendoza’s fiancée was able to speak with him Wednesday before a surgery and again Thursday morning, Kolasinski said.

Kolasinski said Mendoza, a dual citizen of El Salvador and Mexico, came to the U.S. in 2019 but he said he did not know his legal status nor how he arrived to the country.

The attorney said his client works as a laborer to repair fire damage. He has a 2-year-old daughter and is engaged to a U.S. citizen, he said.

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Mexican citizen Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez was among the hundreds of thousands of people shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program allowing people brought to the U.S. as children to stay in the country if they generally stay out of trouble.

But that changed Feb. 18 when she showed up for an immigration hearing and was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported the next day.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” the 42-year-old mother said at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento. “It all happened so fast. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.”

Estrada Juárez held hands with her daughter and began to choke up as she recounted those experiences.

“It’s hard to describe what it feels like to lose your mother so suddenly, especially when you believed she was safe,” said Damaris Bello, Estrada Juárez’s 22-year-old daughter. “It was like grieving someone who was still alive.”

The federal government has deported dozens of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The events come amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of immigration policy more broadly.

Immigration advocates say Estrada Juárez’s removal highlights the need to offer more permanent protections for DACA recipients, often referred to as “Dreamers.”

The case is a rare example of a judge ordering a person’s return to the United States after being deported, said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels like this is happening with more frequency under the current administration which is prioritizing speed and quotas, rather than fairness and process, in facilitating removals,” Inlender said in a statement.

The federal administration said Estrada Juárez was deported because of a 1998 removal order when Estrada Juárez was a teenager, shortly after she arrived in the U.S. She was sent to Mexico at the time but returned to the U.S. weeks later and has had DACA status since 2013. Federal officials reinstated the 1998 order in February after arresting her.

Estrada Juárez spent the next few weeks after being deported with relatives, stressed about being separated from her daughter.

“You can’t enjoy life when the most important part of your life is not there,” she said.

U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins, who was appointed by then-President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order on March 23, giving the federal government seven days to facilitate Estrada Juárez’s return to the U.S. Her deportation was a “flagrant violation” of her DACA protections and infringed upon her due process rights, Coggins wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security has defended the deportation.

“ICE follows all court orders,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “This is yet another ruling from a Biden-appointed activist judge.”

But Estrada Juárez wasn’t aware of the 1998 order, which her lawyer argues wasn’t final.

“DACA gives you a vested right to not be deported once it’s granted,” said Stacy Tolchin, an immigration attorney based in Pasadena, California. “I really don’t understand what they’re doing.”

Bello, who was reunited with her mother Monday night, said she is recovering from the events and hopes other families don’t have to endure the same thing.

“Having her back home means everything to me,” she said. “It means we can begin to heal, to rebuild and to move forward together as a family.”

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