A federal lawsuit filed for an Ontario resident shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in 2025 alleges that an FBI agent fabricated witness statements to assist in the prosecution.
Carlos Jimenez, 26, was charged with assault on a federal officer in a grand jury indictment after he backed his SUV toward three agents who were performing an immigration-enforcement traffic stop on another motorist on Vineyard Avenue in Ontario. The agents said they feared for their safety.
But Jimenez told a judge that he was merely making a three-point turn after ordered to leave. He said he had stopped to tell the agents that day, Oct. 30, 2025, they were blocking a school bus stop.
ICE agent Eusebio Ortiz fired at Jimenez, a U.S. citizen, striking him in the right shoulder.
The charge was dismissed on Nov. 3, as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors that included such provisions as Jimenez following the law and maintaining his job — he did not admit to wrongdoing.
His attorney, Greg Jackson, filed the 54-page lawsuit, which seeks $25 million in damages, on Nov. 6 in U.S. District Court in Riverside.
It says Jimenez received almost no immediate medical care because FBI agents handcuffed him at Riverside Community Hospital, and after he was jailed at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, the San Bernardino County sheriff’s jail staff ignoring his pleas for treatment.
Department of Justice spokesman Ciaran McEvoy declined to comment on the lawsuit: “We’ll litigate the matter in court, not in the press,” he wrote in an email.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jenny Smith said Jimenez’s allegations are inaccurate: “Department records document that he received appropriate and timely medical care while in our custody,” she said in an email.
The U.S. government, Ortiz, the other two agents at the shooting scene, FBI Special Agent Estevan R. Banuelos and the county are defendants.
Banuelos prepared a report about two weeks after the shooting, the suit alleges, that included two nearby residents saying they drove past the scene and saw Jimenez’s SUV parked about six feet from the law enforcement vehicles and that the SUV “had more than enough room to pull forward without having to back up” — supporting prosecutors’ assertion that Jimenez threatened agents with his vehicle.
But, the lawsuit says, an investigator for Jackson got a different story when he interviewed the witnesses this year.
“Both denied being aware that any of the vehicles were law enforcement when they had passed by, denied remembering the color or model of the vehicle in the road, denied giving any specific measurement or estimate of the distance between the vehicle in the road and the other vehicles, denied stating there was more than enough room to pull forward without having to back up, and denied making the purported statements in defendant Banuelos’ report that state otherwise,” the lawsuit charges.
On May 5, U.S. District Judge Kenly Kiya Kato ordered federal officials to produce all records, including texts and emails, pertaining to the case.
Jackson said in an interview that after past shootings by ICE agents, they typically participate in a group text chat.
But the next day the deal was reached, with the charge dropped. Also, Judge Kato suspended the order requiring prosecutors to produce the communications.
McEvoy, the DOJ spokesman, did say Jimenez requested the diversion agreement.
Jackson said it was the government that proposed it.
The lawsuit says the DOJ sought the agreement to avoid Banuelos answering questions “regarding the fabricated witness statements,” and to keep secret Ortiz’s cellphone messages.
For reasons that prosecutors have refused to publicly explain, the immigration officers did not pursue Jimenez as he drove to his nearby home, either to arrest him or, as required by the Department of Homeland Security use-of-force policy, provide immediate medical care.
Instead, Jimenez’s partner drove him to a nearby hospital. The lawsuit alleges that FBI agents pulled a nurse away from Jimenez, handcuffed him and took him back to the scene for questioning, even while he was vomiting and bleeding. After 30 minutes, they booked him into jail instead of returning him to a hospital, the suit says.
“County staff never provided Carlos any medical care,” the lawsuit says. “And (he) was given only a Band-Aid for his actively bleeding gunshot wound.”
Jimenez is a food-pantry employee.
“The effect that this has had on Carlos, not just the physical injuries and the trauma of the interrogation and being thrown in a cell and ignored, but the additional trauma from the statements put out by the DOJ (has been difficult),” Jackson said. “He hopes to get vindication and restore his name.”