A month after ICE agents shot Patterson resident Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez seven times during an early-morning traffic stop off Interstate 5, the small Central Valley city has not returned to normal for many immigrant families.
Some residents say the atmosphere has shifted, and many are no longer willing to stay silent. They describe a deepening anxiety among parts of the city’s largely Latino and immigrant community. Patterson is home to about 25,000 people, and about 60% Latino.
For Avelina Peraza, a community organizer and mother of three who has lived in Patterson for years, the morning of April 7 when the 36-year-old Hernandez was shot on his way to work hit with particular force. She lives just a few blocks from the I-5 Sperry Avenue exit where the shooting occurred. The road near her home was shut down all day, with no traffic passing through.
She said she knew community members wanted to come out in support of Hernandez and his family and take a stand against injustice.
But, she said, fear may have caused many to think twice.
“I think people aren’t going because they’re afraid to do those kinds of protests,” she said. “Because many of us want to attend but because of what’s happening, that’s why they’re not going. Because they’re scared.”
The fear has made people cautious, like lifelong Patterson resident Alyssa – who declined to give her last name like others interviewed out of safety concerns. But she still helped organize a protest in support of Hernandez in late April.
“There’s definitely been a big fear,” she said. “I know there’s people who are scared to go to work or scared to go out and do things because they don’t want to get taken.”
For Alyssa, the most haunting sign came from her own daughter. When ICE’s presence nationwide first intensified about a year ago at the start of the Trump administration, her then-sixth-grader’s friends began talking about being afraid that their families would be targeted next, she said.
“That hit me to my core,” Alyssa said. “These kids are scared that their family’s gonna get taken.”
Daniel Garibay Rodriguez, a Patterson-based community organizer running for California’s 13th Congressional District seat, said the shooting by ICE has forced a reckoning that extends far beyond a single incident. Rodriguez, who grew up in the Valley, said he has been showing up at rallies, vigils and tenant centers to stand alongside immigrant families.
“What happened in Patterson is bigger than one traffic stop,” Rodriguez said. “It left immigrant families across the Valley wondering whether they are safe, driving to work, taking the children to school, or simply existing in their own community.”
Rodriguez said he noticed his community living in fear, ever since the start of the second Trump administration, but especially since the shooting in Patterson. He sees his Latino working-class neighbors processing grief, anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, on top of taking care of their families.
“The Central Valley cannot survive while treating the very people who feed, care for and sustain this area like this,” he said.
Emmanuel, a U.S. Air Force veteran and Stanislaus State student who attended the April rally, said the trauma mirrors what he has studied and personally experienced in the military. A son of Mexican immigrants who has been treated for PTSD, Emmanuel said he recognizes the psychological toll in his community.
“It has a devastating effect on people’s mental health,” he said. “I see it firsthand. I know people who either knew the victim or knew family members, and I can tell that it gives them PTSD.”
When Peraza arrived in Patterson from Mexico 20 years ago, she found a calling as a resource bridge for the many immigrant mothers who arrived in the Valley without a support network. She received an influx of messages and calls from many of those concerned community members on the day of the shooting with questions she didn’t have the answers to.
“People were scared because it was true that ICE was in Patterson,” she said in Spanish. “I sent a message to the people who are scared: We’re going to be fine here.”
Those gathered at the April rally were unified on a list of demands for the Patterson City Council and mayor. They want the city to adopt an ordinance banning ICE from operating on city property and to strengthen protections in line with the California Values Act, the state law that limits local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents.
Rodriguez said he would support a city ordinance banning ICE from operating on city property and called for an accountability oversight committee to monitor the federal agency’s compliance with the law in California. He criticized current elected officials for what he described as silence in the face of an ongoing crisis.
Five city of Patterson officials did not respond to the request for comment from The Modesto Focus.
“Justice starts with transparency,” Rodriguez said. “The public deserves the truth, the family deserves answers, and the community deserves support. And beyond this case, it just means ending immigration enforcement practices that literally terrorize communities, separate families, and make people afraid to live their daily lives.”
Since the April 7 shooting, Hernandez has been in FBI custody while recovering from his injuries. A grand jury indicted him on two counts of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and one count of willful destruction of government property, based on prosecutors’ allegation that he used his car as a weapon — a claim his defense denies.
Hernandez was arraigned May 4, and the case is now in pre-trial discovery, with a status conference set for July 27.
Advocates are also calling for written public reporting on any contact between local police and ICE, for city officials to press the attorney general and governor for intervention, and for an independent, third-party investigation of the Turlock Police Department’s role in the April 3 stop that Hernandez’s attorney raised concerns about.
“We want them to use their influence to protect the community,” Alyssa said, “because that’s what they signed up for.”
Jasmin N., a 23-year-old organizer from Modesto, said the ripple effects of the shooting extend well beyond immigrant families.
“It hurts the whole community,” she said. “It impacts friends, family in the community. And those that stand in solidarity — our hearts also.”
At the start of the Trump administration in 2025, Peraza had organized a gathering in her home through the “Vecinos Unidos” program. The meeting for families in Patterson addressed the fear in the community from the new federal administration’s ramped up immigration enforcement. She had even requested that local officials bring in the sheriff to explain to residents how safe they were and what protocols existed around ICE activity.
“Authorities had told us that immigration agents would need to notify local law enforcement before operating in Patterson, and only if targeting a specific individual,” she said. “They told us – you need to feel safe, to trust that you live here.”
The shooting left her questioning those assurances.
Ximena Loeza is the bilingual communities reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact her at ximena@themodestofocus.org.