Sunnyvale Man Deported to Mexico Sues Trump Administration

“What I want more than anything, I can’t get back: to recover my health, to be with my wife and daughter, and to be able to work again,” he said in a recent phone interview from an aunt’s home in Michoacán, where he lives now.

His U.S.-born wife, Aby Peña, who has remained in California with the couple’s now-5-year-old daughter, Emily, said she doesn’t understand how ICE officers could treat another human being as her husband was treated.

“It’s just inhumane,” she said. “And it also affects children because they’re being separated, and it’s a damage that is irreversible.”

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday, his lawyers say the arrest, on Feb. 21, 2025, led to “a cascade of harms,” including lasting trauma for Peña and their daughter, who witnessed it.

By law, the complaint said, ICE “bears responsibility for the safety and well-being of individuals” it detains. Yet court records indicate the arrest triggered a heart attack and stroke. And the lawsuit said ICE and private prison contractors failed to get Peña López critical follow-up care, including an urgent neurological workup and physical therapy.

The lawsuit also alleges that staff at both facilities where he was held — Golden State Annex and California City Detention Facility, both in Kern County — denied him disability accommodations, such as glasses and hearing aids, as required by law.

In one example cited in the complaint, the private prison staff at Golden State Annex allegedly assigned Peña López to a top bunk: “Ulises’s weakness and numbness on the right side of his body prevented him from safely climbing to a top bunk. He asked detention staff to reassign him to a bottom bunk but was told that they could not make that change.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages to compensate Peña López and his family and to punish the government.

In a statement emailed to KQED, an unnamed Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE arrested Peña López “during targeted operations.” It said “he resisted multiple lawful commands made by ICE officers,” but it didn’t address the lawsuit’s allegations that he was beaten. At the time of the arrest, an ICE spokesman told KQED the allegation that officers beat Peña López was “absolutely inaccurate.”

The ICE statement said, “Any claims of subprime medical care at ICE facilities is FALSE,” and reiterated boilerplate language asserting that the agency provides comprehensive care that “for many illegal aliens … is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

Laura Murchie, a member of Peña López’s legal team, disputes that. She said his health worsened in detention because he did not get the medical care he needed.

As arrests spike, advocates say detention conditions are dangerous

Peña López entered the U.S. illegally in 2013, when he was 18. He said he was unaware that ICE had an expedited removal order from that time, allowing for a fast-track deportation. He had four misdemeanor convictions, though his immigration lawyer, Priya Patel, noted that none involved physical violence.

Lawyers say what happened to Peña López in the early weeks of the second Trump administration was a sign of things to come, with violent, even fatal, immigration raids rolling out in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis.

“There’s just this tenor of impunity that ICE officers have, that’s letting them get away with acting worse more often,” Murchie said. “More people are getting swept up into their impunity and violence.”

Nearly 400,000 people were arrested by ICE last year, more than four times as many as in 2024. The number of people in ICE detention peaked in January at a record high of over 70,000, 80% more than when President Joe Biden left office.

Those surging numbers and the conditions in detention facilities have led to a spike in deaths. Since Trump’s second inauguration, 52 people have died in ICE custody — a mortality rate four times that during the Biden administration and higher even than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watchdog entities, including Disability Rights California and the California Attorney General’s office, have raised alarms about the lack of adequate medical care at ICE facilities in California, including the two where Peña López was held.

Margot Mendelson, executive director of the San Quentin prison-based Prison Law Office, said ICE detention is “extraordinarily dangerous” for people with serious health concerns.

“Anyone can have a medical need while they’re in custody, and they’re often not addressed in a safe and adequate manner,” she said. “It is particularly dangerous for people who show up with pre-existing medical conditions.”

Mendelson’s group filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of detainees, alleging “crisis-level” conditions at the California City facility, which opened abruptly last August. In February, a federal judge ordered the facility to provide adequate medical care and appointed an independent medical expert to monitor the situation.

Lack of critical care leaves lasting damage

Six months before Peña López’s arrest, doctors diagnosed a vertebral artery dissection, a tear inside a blood vessel to the brain, that likely came from lifting heavy loads at his construction job. The condition was well managed, according to the lawsuit, but it put him at risk for a stroke or heart attack.

After he suffered the heart attack during his arrest, ICE summoned paramedics, who took him by ambulance to El Camino Health in Mountain View, where he was kept overnight.

Two days later, he collapsed in the yard at Golden State Annex and was taken to a nearby emergency room with sharp chest pain, difficulty breathing and tingling in his chest, face and arms, according to the complaint. The hospital discharged him with instructions for a swift follow-up appointment, but he never received it, despite emphatic letters from his neurologist back home.

A week after that, Peña López was hospitalized again, with a severe headache and sudden numbness on the right side of his body. Doctors said a neurology consultation was “urgent,” but ICE didn’t arrange one until four months later, according to the claim.

His paralysis is visible in a video posted early this year to social media by an immigrant advocacy group in San Francisco. In contrast, earlier family videos show him as an able-bodied dad with his young daughter.

To recover from his injuries, Peña López requires an operation to place a stent, according to the lawsuit, as well as ongoing medication, monitoring by specialists and intensive rehabilitation. The operation alone is estimated to cost about $30,000, money his family doesn’t have.

Before he was arrested, Peña López had health insurance through his work. In Mexico, he has none, said his wife, a licensed vocational nurse.

“The medication is really expensive, so he hasn’t even been able to keep up with that. But without it, he has a higher risk of getting a blood clot,” she said. “If he had been here, the insurance here would have covered it.”

Meanwhile, Peña López recently lost an appeal of his deportation, so his prospects of returning to the U.S. are slim. The family has tried to stay connected over video calls, with Peña López reading Emily a bedtime story and saying a nightly prayer with her. They even invented a version of hide-and-seek.

“She’d leave the phone on the bed and run off to hide,” he said. “Meanwhile, she’d be talking to me, saying I had to find her. And even though I couldn’t see her, when I told her I spotted her, she’d scream with excitement.”

But lately his internet connection in Mexico has been so poor that even phone calls are often impossible, leaving them all feeling frustrated and sad.

Peña recently decided to give up the Sunnyvale apartment she and her husband had shared. For months, her daughter has been living with her parents near Chico because Peña couldn’t find child care to match her 13-hour shifts at a dialysis clinic. And every week, she drives hours to spend days off with Emily. But the strain has become too much.

“I decided it would be best for me to get a transfer through my job to a clinic closer to my parents, so that I can be with my daughter every day,” she said. “Rent’s a lot cheaper over there, too.”

If they win their claim against ICE, Peña said she hopes it will provide funds for the surgery her husband needs. But that’s not the main thing motivating them.

“It’s important for justice and for awareness, so people can be aware of the truth of what happens with many of these cases,” she said. “It’s not just us. It’s a lot of immigrants who are going through the same thing.”

Peña López said ICE has tried to portray immigrants like him as violent and dangerous to society. He said he hoped the lawsuit would shine a light on the violence and neglect he said ICE is inflicting.

“Who’s the real danger to society?” he said.

Murchie, the attorney, said the case is an attempt “to hold accountable an agency that thinks it’s above the law.” And, she said, “it’s about standing by someone while they’re going through one of the worst things that’s happened in their life.”