California Man Shot by ICE Was Not Trying to Run Over Agent, Lawyers Say

Lawyers for a man shot last week by an immigration agent in Southern California are disputing the account given by federal officials who charged him with assault.

The lawyers for Carlos Jimenez, 25, said on Monday that he was a bystander asking federal agents to move away from a bus stop where schoolchildren would soon be gathering. At the time, the immigration officers had stopped a vehicle near the bus stop in Ontario, Calif., about 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

Lawyers for Mr. Jimenez, a U.S. citizen, said he was later shot in the shoulder as he drove away from federal agents, but said that he did not try to use his vehicle to harm anyone.

Federal prosecutors, however, said last week in a criminal complaint that an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer shot Mr. Jimenez because he pulled forward, turned his wheels and “rapidly accelerated” toward an officer during the vehicle stop on Thursday.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said on Monday that at about 6:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, Mr. Jimenez drove up to a team of immigration officers overseeing a vehicle stop. He then “engaged in a verbal altercation with the officers,” according to the criminal complaint filed against him, and officers ordered him to leave.

Mr. Jimenez reversed his car toward them and “an ICE officer, fearing for his life, fired defensive shots at the vehicle,” she said.

He was charged on Friday with assault of a federal officer following the incident. He was released on bond.

The altercation was the latest high-profile incident in which federal agents fired shots at drivers whom they accused of endangering them during immigration enforcement operations.

Last month, a Mexican man targeted by immigration authorities was injured by gunfire during an operation in Los Angeles. In September, during a traffic stop in Chicago, an ICE agent shot and killed a man who authorities said had hit an officer with his car. A New York Times examination of video from the scene called into question elements of the official D.H.S. account of the encounter.

Ms. McLaughlin called the most recent incident an example of increasing threats that ICE officers face “as they risk their lives to enforce the law and arrest criminals.” She said that anyone who gets in the way of federal officers’ duties or threatens them will be arrested and prosecuted.

Mr. Jimenez’s lawyers told a very different story.

They described him, in an interview on Monday, as a father of three young children who lives in a mobile home park near where the officers were conducting their stop. He was headed to his job at a food bank, where he prepares and delivers donation boxes, when he noticed the officers blocking traffic, said Cynthia Santiago, one of his lawyers.

Mr. Jimenez pulled over to ask the officers if they could clear the street and move away from a nearby bus stop where children would soon be showing up to go to school, his lawyers said.

Federal officials and Mr. Jimenez’s lawyers agree that a federal officer approached Mr. Jimenez’s driver’s side window with a gun in hand, and then retrieved pepper spray. And they agree that Mr. Jimenez quickly reversed his vehicle.

Federal officials said that it appeared Mr. Jimenez was trying to drive toward an officer behind him to potentially cause harm. But Mr. Jimenez’s lawyers said that he was trying to get around the law enforcement vehicles so he could leave, and that officers shot him as he was driving away from them.

“He has to back up to get around the vehicles and around the police cars,” said Robert Simon, one of his lawyers. “They shoot him as he’s driving south, driving away.”

Mr. Simon shared photos of Mr. Jimenez’s car that show the bullet that struck Mr. Jimenez’s shoulder pierced the back passenger window of his car. That suggests Mr. Jimenez had already begun driving away and that the officers were behind him when one fired at him, the lawyers said.

“None of these facts line up,” Ms. Santiago said. “The aggressiveness and the violence used against our communities for people with or without status is pretty evident, and it just seems that they’re using our communities as training grounds.”

Mr. Jimenez’s is scheduled to return to court on Nov. 25.