Federal prosecutors have dismissed an assault charge against a man whose lawyers say he was shot from behind by an immigration agent last year.
The decision Monday to drop the charge against Carlos Jimenez, a U.S. citizen, of assault on a federal officer came after a prolonged effort by the Ontario man’s lawyers to get records related to the shooting, including the officer’s text messages.
Prosecutors said the messages did not exist. A judge ordered them to either produce the records or submit the officer’s sworn statement that they did not exist. The same day, both sides signed an agreement that paved the way for the dismissal.
Jimenez’s civil rights attorney, Greg Jackson, said he was filing suit against the federal government this week alleging malicious prosecution and abuse of process. The suit will claim that federal agents lied about the incident and that the purpose of the government’s prosecution was to conceal agents’ behavior the day of the shooting.
“ The criminal proceeding was initiated and maintained without probable cause,” Jackson said, reading from a draft copy of the complaint. “Carlos was complying with the officers’ instructions and posed no threat.”
In an email, the Department of Justice said the case was dismissed because Jimenez adhered to the agreement reached between his lawyers and prosecutors.
“He held up his end of the deal and stayed out of trouble,” spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy said in an email. “In exchange, we held up our end of the deal and asked the court to dismiss the case, which it did.”
McEvoy said that Jimenez had requested both the agreement and the pause to the judge’s order for prosecutors’ records.
“A grand jury found probable cause to indict Carlos Jimenez for assaulting a federal officer with his car,” McEvoy wrote. “He has no criminal history, and diversion would avoid him suffering a criminal conviction, which would carry serious, lifelong consequences.”
Jimenez’s criminal defense attorney, federal public defender Ayah Sarsour, did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.
According to the federal criminal complaint filed on Oct. 31, 2025, federal immigration agents stopped a car the previous day around 6:30 a.m. when Jimenez pulled up in a Lexus and “engaged in a verbal altercation with the officers at the vehicle stop.”
A federal officer later identified as Eusebio Ortiz approached Jimenez with his gun out and told the man to leave, according to the criminal complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Ortiz put his gun away and pulled out his pepper spray when Jimenez pulled his car forward and then went in reverse, allegedly accelerating rapidly toward another officer.
“At approximately this time,” Ortiz shot Jimenez, hitting him in the right shoulder, according to a footnote in the complaint. Jimenez left the scene, checked in at a hospital and subsequently was arrested, the footnote said.
Jimenez’s lawyers painted a wholly different picture of events.
The father of three was on his way to work at a food bank when he pulled up to the agents to warn them that school-age children would soon be gathering there to take a bus, they said. Jimenez was driving away from the scene when Ortiz shot and nearly killed him, they said.
“This case is yet another matter stemming from an aggressive ICE traffic stop and interaction with the public that resulted in catastrophic consequences and the subsequent filing of an unsupportable criminal charge,” Sarsour wrote in a filing earlier this year.
Court records show that this agreement was reached after repeated pressure from Jimenez’s attorneys to force prosecutors to produce records and a judge’s decision to side with the defense. As McEvoy said in her email, the Justice Department maintains that the defendant requested the agreement.
In the weeks after the shooting, the federal public defenders representing Jimenez sent prosecutors several requests for records, including one on Dec. 2 asking for all texts, emails and other communications by any officer relating to the incident.
On April 6, prosecutors provided the attorneys with some officers’ messages but none from Ortiz, according to emails submitted in court.
Three days later, the lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Kenly Kiya Kato to order that those and other records be produced.
“It strains credulity to believe that immigration officer Ortiz has zero text messages related to this incident,” attorneys wrote. “Not only did his partner officers have communications, but he is the only one who shot and almost killed Mr. Jimenez, thus his credibility is at issue.”
Prosecutors denied withholding messages, saying in a filing a week later that, “contrary to the defense’s insinuation,” they were not hiding Ortiz’s messages.
It was not, in fact, surprising that an officer involved in a shooting would not have messages, because “an officer who has had to use force in his job is likely to be cautious with future communications,” they wrote.
On May 6, Kato ordered prosecutors to produce a slew of records that the attorneys had been demanding, including all communications about the incident produced by any officer.
“If there are no responsive text messages or e-mails from officer Ortiz, the Government shall provide a declaration signed under penalty of perjury by officer Ortiz,” the judge wrote.
If prosecutors didn’t produce the records in seven days, the court would penalize them, including by potentially excluding witnesses or evidence, the judge wrote.
The same day, prosecutors and Jimenez agreed to put the case on hold. Jimenez would “demonstrate good conduct” through diversion, after which prosecutors could move to dismiss the case entirely, court records show. Under the agreement, Jimenez’s lawyers would drop any outstanding court requests and agree to delay the judge’s order to produce the records, according to court filings.
The first of 11 requirements listed in the agreement was that Jimenez drop all pending motions in the case, Jackson said. He was also struck that the agreement made no demands that Jimenez acknowledge any guilt, fault or wrongdoing, he said.
”My personal opinion is that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was very concerned about what might turn up in Ortiz’s phone. Alternatively, they were concerned about what he would have to sign under penalty of perjury and wanted to avoid that” and subjecting an FBI agent who was also involved in the case to a deposition, Jackson said. “And in order to do that, they needed to dismiss the case, and so they reached out about getting this agreement.”
Asked if federal prosecutors offered Jimenez diversion as a way to avoid further scrutiny, McEvoy said in an email that both the diversion agreement and the request to put a stay on the judge’s order arose from requests made by Jimenez himself.
“The defendant could have exercised his right to take the case to trial, but he instead requested that our office agree to resolve the case through a diversion agreement,” McEvoy wrote. “At the defendant’s request, the discovery order was stayed pending his successful completion of diversion. The defendant performed well on diversion and, according to the terms of the agreement, the case was dismissed.”
In a statement, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) demanded additional transparency about the case, including the release of all audio and video.
“We still deserve answers about why he was shot, how the ICE agents involved conducted themselves, and whether those agents faced any disciplinary action for their dangerous and aggressive conduct,” Torres said.
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