A Van Nuys car wash owner and U.S. citizen said he plans to file a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government after agents threw him to the ground twice during an immigration raid and sent him to the detention center.
Surveillance video during the operation from last Tuesday showed Rafie Shouhed being knocked to the ground at his own business, Valley Car Wash.
“Three (agents) attacked me,” Shouhed recalled. “They threw me on the floor in the hallway, and then they ran over me.”
Shouhed said when he went outside to see what the agents needed, agents roughed him up again and handcuffed him.
“They sat on me, on my elbow,” he said, adding he was injured during the process.
Shouhed and five others at his car wash were taken to a federal detention center in downtown LA.
“(I told them) I have a heart condition. I’m an old man, begging them, ‘Let me go. I need to go to the hospital,’” he said.
Shouhed was eventually released without charges, but he doesn’t know what happened to others who were taken into custody.
“I thought this was a nice country, a good country. Why do they do this kind of thing to you?” Shouhed said.
Meanwhile, one of Shouhed’s employees now paces out front, keeping an eye out for federal agents in hopes he can warn his co-workers in time.
“Trump is nearly giving them the green light to treat my partners, my people, thinking like they’re criminals, but in reality, they’re not,” said Luis Huanosta, the car wash employee.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC Los Angeles it was not involved in the operation at Shouhed’s car wash.
NBCLA reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection but did not hear back.
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