A California man who was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer during an enforcement operation in Ontario last year has filed a federal civil lawsuit seeking more than $25 million in damages, in a 54-page complaint filed on November 6, according to Newsweek's reporting carried by Times Now World on November 9. Carlos Jimenez alleges — and these are allegations, not court findings — that federal agents used excessive force, prosecuted him wrongfully and fabricated evidence after the shooting. The filing is a genuinely new development in a case this site has followed: Awaaz Punjab reported on November 3 that the criminal assault charge against Jimenez had been dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. The civil suit now puts the same October 30, 2025 confrontation back before a federal court, this time with Jimenez as the plaintiff.

Source: Times Now World (Newsweek reporting)

Who is being sued

The complaint names the Trump administration and multiple federal agencies and individuals as defendants, including ICE officer Eusebio Ortiz — identified in the reporting as the officer who fired — two Customs and Border Protection officers, FBI Special Agent Estevan R. Banuelos, San Bernardino County and several unidentified individuals, Times Now World reported. Jimenez's civil attorney is Greg Jackson of the Simon Law Group, who has represented him since the criminal case; the San Bernardino County Sentinel reported earlier that Jackson had filed a $35 million administrative claim on Jimenez's behalf against the federal government — the required precursor step to a lawsuit of this kind — while the filed complaint itself seeks more than $25 million. Readers should keep the two figures distinct: $35 million was the earlier claim figure reported by the Sentinel; more than $25 million is what the November 6 lawsuit seeks, as reported by Newsweek.

Source: San Bernardino County Sentinel

The shooting: two accounts that do not agree

The underlying confrontation happened at about 6:30 a.m. on October 30, 2025, on Vineyard Avenue in Ontario, in San Bernardino County, where ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers had made an unrelated immigration enforcement traffic stop, according to the U.S. Attorney's criminal complaint as reported at the time by the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Jimenez, who lived in the Country Meadows Mobile Home Park near Riverside Drive and Vineyard Avenue and was driving to his job at a food bank, pulled alongside the officers. His lawyers say he told them they were blocking a school bus stop where children would soon arrive, and that an officer ordered him to leave. What happened next is the heart of the dispute. Jimenez's counsel asserts he was making a three-point turn to comply and drive away when Ortiz fired through the rear passenger window; the bullet struck him in the back of the shoulder, where it remains lodged, and broke his shoulder blade, his attorney said. The Department of Homeland Security's account is starkly different: a spokesperson said Jimenez positioned his vehicle in front of the officers and, when instructed to move, reversed toward them, and that the officer fired in self-defence because he feared the vehicle posed an immediate threat. Neither account has been established by a court.

What the lawsuit alleges happened afterwards

The complaint further alleges that after Jimenez was taken to hospital for emergency trauma care, FBI agents removed him from his hospital bed while he still had gunshot wounds and fragments near his lung, placed him in restraints and transported him for questioning, and that authorities failed to provide adequate medical treatment or necessary medication while he was held at the West Valley Detention Center. These, too, are the plaintiff's claims in a filed complaint; the agencies named have not, in the reporting published so far, answered the civil allegations point by point.

The criminal case that came first — and ended in dismissal

Federal prosecutors initially charged Jimenez with assaulting a federal officer with his vehicle. A judge freed him on a $10,000 bond with an ankle monitor after prosecutors had sought to hold him, according to the Press-Enterprise's reporting of the criminal case. The case then turned: after a U.S. District Judge ordered the government to disclose internal communications and operational records, Jimenez entered a diversion agreement, and the criminal indictment was dismissed with prejudice, Times Now World reported — a dismissal Awaaz Punjab covered on November 3. The court made no finding on whether the officers' conduct was lawful. The Sentinel reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office had concluded, following an internal Department of Homeland Security review, that Ortiz overreacted to Jimenez's presence — a characterisation of the government's internal reasoning that DHS has not publicly adopted, and which readers should treat as the Sentinel's reporting, not an official admission.

The Banuelos allegations — and the Justice Department's reply

A significant portion of the civil filing focuses on FBI Special Agent Estevan R. Banuelos. The lawsuit claims — again, as unproven allegations — that Banuelos falsified investigative reports by attributing statements to witnesses who later denied giving them or witnessing the shooting, and that prosecutors offered the diversion agreement to avoid putting Banuelos under oath and to avoid further scrutiny of evidence, including missing communications from officer Ortiz. The Justice Department has previously stated that the requested text messages did not exist and that the diversion agreement was requested by the defence, Times Now World reported. Both sides' positions are therefore on the record, and only the civil proceedings will test them.

Background: Ontario, Vineyard Avenue and the enforcement corridor

Ontario is a logistics and warehousing city in western San Bernardino County, in the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles — a region of distribution centres, truck routes along Interstates 10 and 15, and large immigrant and Punjabi communities whose members work in exactly the warehouses, food banks and trucking yards that line Vineyard Avenue and Riverside Drive. The stop that morning was part of immigration enforcement in a residential area at school-bus time, which is why the case drew attention far beyond one traffic stop: it became a test of what happens when an enforcement operation, a bystander's warning about children, and a single gunshot collide. Jimenez is a U.S. citizen and a father of three, according to his lawyers — a fact that has shaped public reaction to the case, since the man shot was not himself the target of the immigration stop.

What happens next

The federal defendants must now respond to the complaint in court, where the government will have to answer — or move to dismiss — the excessive-force and fabrication claims on the record, rather than through press statements. The earlier dismissal with prejudice means the criminal case cannot return; the civil case is now the only live proceeding over the October 2025 shooting, and it will turn on the same contested evidence — the internal communications the criminal judge ordered disclosed, the witnesses each side says support them, and the missing-messages dispute. No hearing date has been reported yet. Awaaz Punjab will follow the filings and update this story when the government responds or a court rules.