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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The 37-year-old woman was shot in the head in front of a family member in a snowy residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets and about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

Her killing after 9:30 a.m. was recorded on video by witnesses, and the shooting quickly drew a large crowd of angry protesters. By evening, hundreds were there for a vigil to mourn her death and urge the public to resist immigration enforcers.

The woman, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, had a 6-year old child, her mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune. Macklin Good described herself on social media as a “poet and writer and wife and mom” who was from Colorado.

Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear in the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer and there is no indication of whether or not the woman had interactions with ICE officers before the videos started. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb nearby before crashing to a stop.

In another video taken at the scene, a woman, who described Macklin Good as her spouse, is seen crying near the vehicle. The woman, who was not identified, said the couple had only recently arrived in Minnesota and that they had a child.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him.”

In a social media post, President Donald Trump made similar accusations against the woman and defended ICE’s work.

Local officials dispute the narrative

Noem claimed the woman was part of a “mob of agitators” and said the officer followed his training. She said the veteran officer who fired his gun had been rammed and dragged by an anti-ICE motorist in June.

“Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that in this situation, it was preventable,” Noem said, adding that the FBI would investigate.

But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted Noem’s version of what happened as “garbage” and criticized the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of the immigration crackdown.

“What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said, calling on the immigration agents to leave. “They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”

“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” the mayor said.

Shooting is fifth linked to crackdowns

The shooting marked a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major cities under the Trump administration. The death of the woman in Minneapolis was at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns.

The Twin Cities have been on edge since DHS announced Tuesday that it had launched the operation, which is at least partly tied to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. Noem said they had already made “hundreds and hundreds” of arrests.

A large throng of protesters gathered at the scene after the shooting, where they vented their anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official who has been the face of crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

“She was driving away and they killed her,” said Lynette Reini-Grandell, a local resident who was among those who filmed the shooting.

In a scene that hearkened back to the Los Angeles and Chicago crackdowns, bystanders heckled the officers, chanting “ICE out of Minnesota” and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.

Governor calls for calm

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he’s prepared to deploy the National Guard if necessary. He described the killing as “predictable” and “avoidable.” He also said like many, he was outraged by the shooting, but he called on people to keep protests peaceful.

“They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” the governor said.

Minneapolis Public Schools canceled school, sports and activities for Thursday and Friday, saying in a statement that the decision was “due to safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara briefly described the shooting to reporters but, unlike federal officials, gave no indication that the driver was trying to harm anyone.

There were calls on social media to prosecute the officer who shot the driver. Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said state authorities would investigate the shooting with federal authorities.

“Keep in mind that this is an investigation that is also in its infancy. So any speculation about what has happened would be just that,” Jacobson told reporters.

The shooting happened in the district of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who called it “state violence,” not law enforcement.

For nearly a year, migrant rights advocates and neighborhood activists across the Twin Cities have been preparing to mobilize in the event of an immigration enforcement surge. From houses of worship to mobile home parks, they have set up very active online networks, scanned license plates for possible federal vehicles and bought whistles and other noisemaking devices to alert neighborhoods of any enforcement presence.

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ICE officers were conducting a vehicle stop around 6:30 a.m. at the 2800 block of Vineyard Ave in Ontario, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security. During the stop, an unknown person who was not the target pulled a vehicle in front of the officers, she said.

Officers ordered the driver to leave, McLaughlin said, but as the driver began to pull away “the car stopped and attempted to run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping.”

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, fired defensive shots at the vehicle,” McLaughlin said. “The subject fled the scene and abandoned his vehicle.”

McLaughlin called it “another example of the threats our ICE officers are facing day-in and day-out as they risk their lives to enforce the law and arrest criminals.”

Immigration agents have been increasingly involved in aggressive confrontations with suspects and protesters.

Last week, ICE officers fired at a man in South Los Angeles who was in a vehicle after agents boxed his car in. The man, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, was shot in the elbow, and a deputy marshal was hit by what authorities said was a ricocheted bullet. They accused Parias of trying to ram agents’ cars.

On Wednesday, a man was hospitalized after a shooting in Phoenix involving an ICE agent. According to local media reports, ICE officers conducted a traffic stop, but the driver began speeding away and an officer in the vehicle’s path feared for his life and fired his weapon.

In September and October, there were two shootings, by ICE and Border Patrol, into vehicles in Chicago, one fatal. And in August, federal agents shot into a car in San Bernardino during an immigration stop.

In a news release, the Ontario Police Department said it responded to a request for emergency assistance from DHS officers regarding an officer-involved shooting.

Police officers were not involved in the initial incident, according to the release. Several officers then responded to the scene to provide traffic control and security while DHS conducted its investigation.

DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are investigating the incident, police said.

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