The 79-year-old owner of a Los Angeles area car wash is seeking $50m in damages from the federal government after US immigration authorities allegedly slammed the US citizen to the ground and detained him for almost 12 hours.
Rafie Ollah Shouhed suffered significant injuries during an immigration raid this month, his attorney said, including broken ribs and a traumatic brain injury. The agents “violated the Constitution, California civil rights law, and basic human decency”, V James DeSimone, a civil rights attorney representing the man, said in a statement on Thursday.
“These masked agents’ conduct was lawless, reckless and cruel,” DeSimone said. “If this can happen in broad daylight to an American senior citizen who committed no crime, it can happen to anyone. This was not law enforcement, it was an assault on civil rights and our democracy cannot survive if federal agents operate above the law.”
The incident comes as Donald Trump’s administration continues its aggressive mass deportation campaign with raids across southern California. Operations are on the rise after the US supreme court lifted restrictions on such activity earlier this month, allowing agents to continue sweeping raids, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has vowed to “flood the zone in Los Angeles”.
Meanwhile, numerous US citizens have been swept up in immigration operations in the state and the federal government is facing lawsuits and legal claims over its conduct. The mother of a 15-year-old US citizen who federal agents detained at gunpoint is seeking $1m in damages and accusing the Trump administration of false imprisonment and “unconstitutional racial profiling”.
Shouhed is seeking damages from DHS, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Border Patrol after the 9 September incident and alleges assault, battery and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, among others.
Late that morning, masked agents entered Shouhed’s car wash in Van Nuys – video appears to show one push the owner down as he entered the building. Shouhed went outside to “provide proof that his employees were authorized to work”, but the agents swore at him, pushed him and “violently body-slammed him onto the pavement”, his lawyer’s office said in a statement.
A group of three agents jumped on his back, pulled Shouhed’s arms back and handcuffed him, according to the statement, ignoring his protests that he had recently undergone heart surgery and needed medical attention. Though never charged with a crime, he was detained for nearly 12 hours at a detention center in Los Angeles. His lawyer’s office said he was kept in custody even after agents said they knew his citizenship status and did not allow him to call his family.
After Shouhed was released, he was treated at a hospital for broken ribs, post-concussive symptoms of a traumatic brain injury and injuries to his elbows. Photos taken after the incident show extensive bruising on his arm.
In an interview with NBC4 Los Angeles, Shouhed expressed shock over what happened. “I thought this was a nice country, a good country. Why do they do this kind of thing to you?”
The DHS said in a statement, citing an unnamed spokesperson, that a 9 September border patrol operation in Van Nuys resulted in the arrests of five undocumented immigrants. Shouhed “impeded the operation and was arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer”, the statement said.
He was released without charges. Shouhed could have died in the incident, his lawyer said.
“The video shows you, this is the way Ice is operating our community. They use physical force and do not speak to the people in order to ascertain who is there legally in order to do their job,” DeSimone said at a press conference this week. “Instead, they immediately resort to force.”
In its statement, DHS said the agency and its “components continue to enforce the law every day in greater Los Angeles even in the face of danger”.
