I originally posted about the shooting of 36-year-old Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez by federal agents here.
But to recap, a week ago, in Patterson, California, ICE agents carried out what they called a targeted vehicle stop on 36-year-old Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez. According to them, he was some kind of gang member tied to the 18th Street Gang and wanted for questioning in a murder in El Salvador. They said he ‘weaponized’ his car and tried to run over an agent, so they opened fire. A story that’s becoming far too familiar.
But as you pull at the edges of the story, it doesn’t hold together so neatly. Mendoza Hernandez was shot multiple times, at least six times by most accounts, including in the face. He survived, barely, and ended up going through multiple surgeries just to stay alive. His attorney says he wasn’t some gang member on the run but a guy on his way to work, rehabbing burned-out buildings, who suddenly found himself surrounded by armed federal agents.
From his hospital bed, Mendoza Hernandez told a very different story. He says he thought it was a routine stop, that he asked to call his fiancée, and that things escalated from there. According to him, the shooting started before he tried to get away, and the only reason he moved the car at all was because he thought he was about to die.
The accusation about a murder in El Salvador was also thrown around early and often, but his attorney produced records showing he was acquitted back in 2019. That didn’t stop it from being repeated anyway, because that’s what the current administration does.
Now, the U.S. Department of Justice has charged Mendoza Hernandez with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon. That deadly weapon being his car, of course.
So let me get this straight. A man gets shot multiple times by federal agents, ends up in a hospital, goes through surgery after surgery, gets wheeled into court, and now he’s the one facing up to 20 years in prison?
If you’ve been paying attention to how ICE operates lately, especially in these vehicle stops, there’s a pattern that keeps coming up. Someone moves a car, even slightly, and suddenly it’s treated like a deadly weapon. Then the guns come out, and then the bullets fly. We’ve seen versions of this before, and every time it comes down to the same justification. The agent felt ‘threatened.’ I’ve seen baby deer that were less skittish than these chucklefucks.
Now imagine you’re the one in that car.
You’re surrounded by armed federal agents. You may or may not understand exactly what’s happening. You’re being told you’re going into custody. Maybe you think you’re not coming out of it alive. Maybe you’ve seen enough headlines or enough videos to know how quickly these encounters can turn deadly.
So you try to get out of there, get shot in the face, and then get charged with assault because a jackbooted snowflake says he felt threatened.
If ICE didn’t have the reputation it has right now of being a trigger-happy death squad fueled by cruelty and hate, would Mendoza Hernandez have tried to flee in the first place?
Instead, we’re left with a man who was shot multiple times, who says he was trying to save his own life, and who is now being prosecuted as if he was the aggressor from the beginning. The early accusations about gangs and murder don’t hold up cleanly. The only thing that’s clear is that once shots were fired, there was no going back.
And now the system is moving to make sure the version of events that survives is the one that puts a man in prison, not the one that puts violent sociopaths disguised as federal agents under a microscope.
(Source)
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