The 80-year-old owner of a Van Nuys car wash who was injured during a raid by ICE agents last week shared surveillance video of the incident with KTLA on Tuesday.
Valley Car Wash owner Rafie Shouhed said five of his employees were detained by agents during the Sept. 9 raid, but officials have yet to confirm.
Video shows a masked agent rushing down a narrow hallway of the car wash as Shouhed enters from the opposite direction and gets knocked to the ground.
Later, outside the car wash, Shouhed is seen engaging with an agent who is in the process of detaining one of his employees. He is eventually dragged to the ground by another agent as the situation gets physical.
Shouhed, who told KTLA’s Carlos Saucedo that he is a U.S. citizen, said he wanted to get answers from the agents and was not trying to intervene.
“They grabbed one of my guys, and I told them, hold on, some of these people they have papers, they have the documentation here. And the only thing they said was, ‘You don’t F with ICE. We are here,’ and they threw me on the floor … and three of them, they jumped on me and they were sitting on me,” Shouhed said.
Shouhed was placed in handcuffs and transferred to the Metro Detention Center, where his family says he was denied medical care despite his injuries and a heart condition.
Upon his release later that night, Shouhed was taken to a local hospital for a dislocated elbow, broken ribs and contusions on both arms.
His family is now seeking legal action against the federal government.
The Department of Homeland Security provided a statement on the operation, saying:
“On September 9, U.S. Border Patrol conducted a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Van Nuys, California, that resulted in the arrest of 5 illegal aliens from Guatemala and Mexico who broke our nation’s immigration laws, including one who was removed from the country twice in 2015 . The owner of Valley Car Wash,U.S. citizen, impeded the operation and was arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer.”
