Family Files Federal Lawsuit Alleging ICE Beating, Medical Neglect in Detention

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose alleges Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers used excessive force during a February 2025 arrest in Sunnyvale and denied adequate medical care to a man held for eight months before his deportation to Mexico.

The case, Peña Lopez v. United States (Case No. 5:26-cv-06864-BLF), was filed in early July by Ulises Peña Lopez, his wife Aby Peña (a U.S. citizen), and their daughter (also a U.S. citizen). Named as defendants: the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and private detention companies GEO Group and CoreCivic.

The complaint brings 18 causes of action, including claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Fifth Amendment, and California’s Unruh and Bane Acts. Plaintiffs seek compensatory and punitive damages, declaratory relief, and attorneys’ fees.

According to the complaint, ICE agents surrounded Peña Lopez’s truck outside the family’s Sunnyvale home the morning of February 21, 2025, as he prepared to leave for work. “One officer put a gun to his head,” the complaint states. “Others forced him to the ground. ICE officers then jerked Ulises up off of the ground and rammed him against the car while beating him with closed fists, striking multiple blows to his ribs and neck.”

The complaint alleges agents used racial slurs during the arrest. Peña Lopez’s daughter, identified in court documents as “E.P.,” witnessed the arrest from the family’s second-story apartment window and “was sobbing,” according to the lawsuit.

A second alleged assault occurred minutes later, the complaint states, after ICE agents pulled Peña Lopez from a transport van in an alley. “Ulises, who was still handcuffed behind his back, tumbled out of the vehicle from a height of approximately four feet and struck his head on the ground. The ICE officers began kicking and beating Ulises, punching him in the ribs, stomach, arms, legs, and neck,” the complaint alleges. Peña Lopez lost consciousness twice and began convulsing, according to the lawsuit. ICE agents called paramedics.

Peña Lopez was hospitalized for one day, kept shackled, and monitored constantly by ICE agents who the complaint alleges obstructed confidential meetings with his lawyer. He had a pre-existing vascular condition he was being treated for, and the complaint alleges the beating triggered a medical emergency.

Rather than being released to recover, Peña Lopez was transferred directly from the hospital into ICE detention — first at The GEO Group’s Golden State Annex (GSA) in McFarland, then CoreCivic’s California City detention center.

Over the following months, the lawsuit alleges, employees at both facilities repeatedly denied Peña Lopez proper medical care and disability accommodations despite deteriorating health that included paralysis and numbness on his right side, vision and hearing loss, and traumatic psychological distress.

At GSA, staff mocked Peña Lopez for his manner of speaking, impeded by numbness and paralysis in his mouth, according to the complaint. They repeatedly told him to “say it again” and got angry at his inability to hear well, the lawsuit states. The complaint quotes staff as saying “mother****er, you don’t get to be asleep” and “you mother****er, you’re never gonna walk again,” and calling him “Little estrellita [star].” When Peña Lopez struggled to walk or stand, officers told him to “sit down on the stick,” referring to his cane, the complaint alleges.

At CoreCivic’s detention center, employees allegedly refused to move Peña Lopez from a top to a bottom bunk despite his impaired mobility. “Ulises coordinated an informal switch with another detained person in his dormitory, risking punishment [solitary confinement] for doing so,” the complaint states. Medication was supplied inconsistently, according to the lawsuit.

ICE deported Peña Lopez to Mexico in October 2025 after holding him for eight months. He is now living in hiding in Mexico, in fear for his life (the original reason he left Mexico), according to his attorney Laura Murchie of Disability Law United. Many of Peña Lopez’s present medical conditions are direct results of ICE abuse, Murchie stated, and he needs between $20,000 and $35,000 of surgery he cannot afford.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson described Peña Lopez as a “criminal illegal alien from Mexico with prior arrests” who entered the United States illegally in 2013 and was arrested by border agents before being “released into the country by the Obama Administration, unvetted.”

Santa Clara County Superior Court records show Peña Lopez was convicted in 2020 of misdemeanor assault stemming from a 2019 incident involving his girlfriend (now his wife) at a Palo Alto apartment. In 2020, Peña Lopez was also sentenced to 14 days in jail after driving under the influence and crashing into a traffic light in Mountain View.

ICE stated Peña Lopez “initially did not comply with officers’ repeated instructions to exit the vehicle” but exited “when officers attempted to extract him.” The agency added: “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States, and ICE is working diligently to remove them.” ICE said it “does not comment on pending litigation.”

Peña Lopez’s attorney, Elena Hodges of Pangea Legal Services, said Peña Lopez was undocumented at the time of his arrest, and the lawsuit does not challenge his removal from the United States. “When a community member serves their time in prison or jail and earns their release, they should be able to reunite with their family and contribute to our communities,” Hodges stated. “ICE’s attempt to focus on Ulises’s criminal history shouldn’t be allowed to distract from what this case is actually about: the severe harm that ICE officers and private detention contractors have subjected this family to.”

The Lopez complaint references a separate lawsuit, Ruiz v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, filed in November 2025, making similar allegations against CoreCivic’s California City detention center. Ruiz alleged conditions at the facility including sewage bubbling up in drains, vermin, restricted access to lawyers, and a medical care system that’s “broken at every level,” according to the complaint.

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in Ruiz, ordering ICE to provide adequate medical care, appoint an independent monitor, and ensure confidential lawyer conferences. The order took effect when Peña Lopez was held there. The facility was also under city investigation for alleged building, fire safety, and health code violations, according to the complaint.

According to the lawsuit, Aby Peña has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression and “continues to experience pervasive emotional distress, nightmares, grief and worry for her husband and daughter.” The couple’s daughter has “regressed in her development” and often wakes in the middle of the night “screaming and crying,” the lawsuit states. One morning, her mother found her in the corner of the living room, “crying and hugging a photo of her father,” according to the complaint.

None of the defendants — the United States, DHS-ICE, GEO Group, or CoreCivic — had filed a response to the complaint as of press time. Private companies have 21 days and government agencies have 60 days to file their responses after the complaint has been served.

The Breakdown

• Case filed in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose Division, in early July 2026.
• 18 causes of action, including claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Fifth Amendment, and California’s Unruh and Bane Acts.
• Plaintiffs: Ulises Peña Lopez, his wife Aby Peña (U.S. citizen), and their daughter (U.S. citizen).
• Defendants: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE, GEO Group, CoreCivic.
• Alleged misconduct: excessive force during arrest (February 21, 2025), denial of medical care and disability accommodations during eight months of detention (February–October 2025), and emotional distress to family members who witnessed the arrest.
• Peña Lopez was deported to Mexico in October 2025.

What This Means for You

This lawsuit alleges ICE — a federal executive agency carrying out enforcement policy set by the President’s administration — and its private contractors abused a detained person and denied him medical care. That is the kind of claim about how federal immigration enforcement actually operates that a voter needs to see when judging the administration responsible for it.

The lawsuit’s outcome will turn on what the material evidence shows about the arrest and the conditions at two privately-run detention facilities under federal contract. A voter weighing the current administration’s immigration enforcement policy, or weighing candidates’ positions on ICE’s use of private contractors, is voting on the system this lawsuit describes — whether those allegations are ultimately proven or not, the claim itself is part of the accountability record for that policy.

What to Watch

The complaint alleges ICE and its contractors subjected a detained person to excessive force, racial slurs, medical neglect, and disability discrimination — and that the person’s U.S. citizen family members, including a child, were traumatized by witnessing the arrest and its aftermath. The defendants have not yet responded.

Two questions are worth watching as this case proceeds. First: what does the material evidence — medical records, facility logs, detention-center policies, witness accounts — show about the arrest and the conditions Peña Lopez was held in? The complaint’s allegations are serious and specific; ICE and the contractors will either produce records that contradict them or will not.

Second: what does this lawsuit say about the use of private contractors to run federal detention facilities? The complaint alleges systematic failures at two privately-run facilities — denied medical care, mocking of a disabled detainee, inadequate disability accommodations — and cites a separate lawsuit (Ruiz) that alleged similarly “broken” conditions at one of the same facilities, serious enough that a federal judge imposed an injunction. A voter weighing whether the federal government should continue contracting detention operations to private companies is voting on a system this lawsuit claims is failing at a basic duty-of-care level. Whether this case is ultimately proven or settled, it is one more data point in that question.