SUNNYVALE, Calif. — A Sunnyvale family has filed a federal lawsuit alleging Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers used excessive force while arresting a man in front of his wife and young daughter and that he suffered months of inadequate medical care while in immigration detention before being deported to Mexico.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court by Ulises Peña Lopez, his wife, Aby Peña, and their daughter, names the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic as defendants. According to the complaint, the alleged abuse during Peña Lopez’s arrest and detention sparked protests against immigration enforcement across the South Bay last year.
According to the lawsuit, in February 2025, masked ICE agents surrounded Peña Lopez in his truck outside his Sunnyvale apartment as he prepared to leave for work. The complaint alleges, “An ICE officer struck the driver’s side window of Peña Lopez’s truck repeatedly with a baton, and cracked it. When Peña Lopez stepped out of the truck, several officers grabbed him, and his U.S. citizen wife was blocked by ICE agents and watched from the top of the staircase.”
“One officer put a gun to his head,” the lawsuit 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.”
Court documents state that his daughter, “E.P., a U.S. citizen, witnessed everything and was sobbing as she looked from the window of the family’s second-story apartment.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not identify themselves, 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.”
ICE said Peña Lopez “initially did not comply with officers’ repeated instructions to exit the vehicle” but exited “when officers attempted to extract him.” The agency also stated, “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States, and ICE is working diligently to remove them.”
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.
The lawsuit alleges ICE officers shouted commands at Peña Lopez in English, which he did not understand.
Santa Clara County Superior Court records show Peña Lopez was convicted in 2020 of misdemeanor assault stemming from a 2019 incident involving his girlfriend 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.
Hodges said, “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.” She added that “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, from the violent ICE arrest to the many months of disability discrimination and other abuses in detention.”
According to the lawsuit, Peña Lopez, who had previously suffered a ministroke, began convulsing while being transported in an ICE vehicle. The complaint alleges officers pulled him from the vehicle, beat him and applied pressure to his throat. The lawsuit states he lost consciousness twice during the incident.
According to the lawsuit, Peña Lopez endured freezing temperatures, inadequate medical care and repeated transfers among immigration detention facilities. He was ultimately deported to Mexico, where the complaint alleges his physical and mental health continued to deteriorate.
The lawsuit also states that Aby Peña has since 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.”
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