A 79-year-old car wash owner in Van Nuys Thursday announced Thursday he filed a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, after he was pushed and pinned to the ground by federal agents during a raid at his business earlier this month.
Rafie Ollah Shouhed claims that on Sept. 9, a group of masked agents stormed into his business on Van Nuys Boulevard and began detaining some of his workers. When Shouhed, a U.S. citizen, tried to talk to the agents and show the legal paperwork for his employees, the agents, he said, shoved him onto the ground, with at least one of them putting his knee on Shouhed’s neck.
“(Shouhed) is telling (agents), ‘I can’t breathe.’ They said, ‘You don’t F with ICE,” said James DeSimone, Shouhed’s attorney, adding the elderly man was later treated for multiple broken ribs, injuries to the elbows, contusions and post-concussive symptoms of a traumatic brain injury.
Surveillance video from inside and outside the business appears to show Shouhed being knocked to the ground.
“I was begging them, ‘I have a heart condition,’” Shouhed recounted the interaction with the agents. “Three big people were sitting on my back, the way they tore me down, sitting on me. I asked them to let me go.”
The business owner said although he kept telling the agents that he was a U.S. citizen, he was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA and held for nearly 12 hours without any medical care. During the period of detention, he was given only one bottle of water, he said.
As he suffered physical pain and was traumatized by the alleged ordeal, Shouhed and his legal team are seeking $50 million in damages.
He also claimed he saw children being taken into the federal detention center in shackles while he was unjustly detained at the facility.
“They were bringing in people with trucks – innocent little 11, 12, 13-year-old little girls with handcuffs and shackles on their feet,” Shouhed said.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC Los Angeles this month that 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.