At least eight people were taken into custody Tuesday afternoon in an immigration enforcement operation at a Culver City car wash.
Video showed agents in U.S. Border Patrol uniforms and masks in a white van at the Handy J Car Was on Washington Boulevard. Witnesses who captured the video said about eight people were taken into custody.
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Video also showed people running in a parking lot and inside the car wash with agents chasing after them.
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NBCLA has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information.
Details about why the individuals were detained were not immediately available, but the federal operation was one of several since early July in the Los Angeles area. Locations targeted in the raids include car washes and Home Depot parking lots.
Last month, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order limiting tactics used during the federal operations. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs asked the court to prevent the federal government from conducting raids “without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”
The lawsuit accused the agents of targeting a specific ethnicity by going to workspaces where they are commonly employed, mentioning operations at local car washes and outside Home Depot stores.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied the accusation that agents are after a particular group.
In an Aug. 1 ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling to maintain the temporary restraining order, granted by a federal judge, over how the federal government conducts immigration enforcement operations in Southern California.
The aggressive immigration enforcement operations that began in June in Los Angeles are part of President Trump mass deportation plan, a central promise of his second campaign for the White House.
Through Aug. 1, nearly 56,600 migrants had been taken into ICE detention since the start of President Trump’s second term, according NBC News, which used ICE data both public and internal as well as data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
About 29% of those in detention had criminal convictions; 24.7% had pending criminal charges; 46.8% were listed as “other immigration violator;” and 11.9% were fast-tracked for deportation.
