Rebecca Shouhed watched the surveillance video in horror, as one immigration agent knocked her 79-year-old, U.S. citizen father to the ground inside his car wash business. When he got back up and went outside, two others tackled him to the pavement.
An agent can be seen barreling into her father, Rafie Ollah Shouhed, she said, “bulldozing down the hallways like a linebacker.”
Under President Donald Trump‘s nationwide immigration crackdown federal agents are on orders to aggressively go after people they believe are in the country illegally.
The increasingly violent arrest encounters have resulted in multiple, multi-million-dollar tort claims by people – including American citizens – who say they were severely harmed or wrongfully detained during ICE operations.
Department of Homeland Security leaders have accused alleged use-of-force victims of resisting arrest, assaulting agents or impeding law enforcement operations.
“If you lay a hand on our law enforcement, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a Sept. 19 post on the social media site X.
Shouhed, the owner of Valley Car Wash in Van Nuys, California, filed a $50 million tort claim Sept. 26 against DHS and its component agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, claiming agents “illegally and unlawfully assaulted and battered” him during their operation.
A DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY that agents arrested “five illegal aliens from Guatemala and Mexico who broke our nation’s immigration laws” and that Shouhed “impeded the operation and was arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer.”
ICE detained Shouhed for nearly 12 hours, according to the tort claim; he was not charged with a crime.
James DeSimone, the attorney representing Shouhed in his claim said the car wash owner told agents to let him show his employees’ work authorization paperwork. DeSimone said surveillance video clearly shows Shouhed “isn’t engaging in threatening conduct.”
“Instead of talking to him, they just immediately resort to force and force that was very brutal,” DeSimone said.
Rebecca Shouhed said she “went crazy” after seeing the video. “He has had a heart attack. He has three stents in his heart.”
Shouhed, the father, said in a news conference after the Sept. 9 incident, that agents only repeated: “You do not f— with ICE. You do not f— with ICE.”
Shouhed’s isn’t the first tort claim against DHS this year.
In another, in August, the wife and daughter of a farmworker who died following an ICE raid on a California cannabis greenhouse claim ICE agents clad in battle gear used “excessive force” that resulted in the fatal fall that killed Jaime Alanís, 56.
Alanís died of blunt-force head and neck injuries two days after the raid, according to family and the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office. His widow and daughter are each seeking $47 million.
Separately, in August, U.S. citizen and Iraq War veteran George Retes filed a tort claim against DHS seeking unspecified damages after ICE agents allegedly broke his car window and arrested him at an ICE roadblock in Southern California and held him for three days without access to an attorney.
All three claims were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which can precede a lawsuit in federal court.
The FTCA was created to allow people to sue the federal government when they are harmed by government employees, according to the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm representing Retes in his claim. The legislation requires plaintiffs, before suing in court, to first submit claims to the responsible federal agencies.
In its fiscal 2025 budget report, ICE said its litigation division was defending, as of fiscal 2023, more than 350 administrative tort claims seeking over $55.5 billion in damages. The agency had paid out just $813,565 in completed claims, according to the report.
“It appears to be the pattern of these agents to resort to force at any time when they are questioned or confronted,” DeSimone said.
A 2018 policy memo – written and distributed during the first Trump administration – provides detailed guidance on when and how Homeland Security law enforcement officers may use force.
They may use force “to control subjects in the course of their official duties as authorized by law, and in defense of themselves and others.” To meet the standards of the 4th Amendment, the DHS guidelines require use of force to be “objectively reasonable” in a given situation.
The guidelines also recognize that law enforcement officers “are often forced to make split-second judgments, in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.” Use of physical force must stop “when resistance ceases or when the incident is under control.”
There have been few public consequences this year for ICE and other federal agents captured on video manhandling immigrants, protestors or bystanders.
But an unnamed ICE agent was “relieved of current duties” in September after video circulated showing him slamming a distraught woman to the floor inside an immigration court building in New York City.
Rebecca Shouhed said she is concerned for what’s to come, as Trump’s crackdown widens.
“Nobody is able to rein this in,” she said. “It’s like a free for all.”
Lauren Villagran, who covers immigration for USA TODAY, can be reached at lvillagran@usatoday.com.

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