Multiple tort claims field against ICE
Allege excessive force, other wrongdoings
By: Lauren Villagran
USA Today
..... Rebecca Shouhed watched the surveillance video in horror.
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One immigration agent knocked her father, a 79-year-old U.S. citizen, to the ground inside his car wash business. When he got back up and went outside, two other tackled him to the pavement.
..... An agent could be seen barreling into her father, Rafie Pollah Shouhed, she said, "bulldozing down the hallways like a linebacker."
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Under President Donald Trump;s nationwide immigration crackdown, federal agents are on orders to aggressively go aft3er people they believe are in the country illegally. The increasingly violent arrest encounters have resulted in multiple multimillion-dollar tort claims by people - including U.S. citizens - who say they were severely harmed or wrongfully detained during Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
..... Department of Homeland Security leaders have accused alleged use-of-force victims of resisting arrest, assaulting agents or impeding law enforcement operations.
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"If you lay a hand on our law enforcement, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law,: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Norm said in a September 19 [2025] on X.
..... Shouhed, the owner of Valley Car Wash in Van Nuys, California, filed a 450 million claim September 26 [2025] against the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, including ICE, claiming agents "illegally and unlawfully assaulted and battered; him during their operation.
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a Homeland Security 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 operations and was arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer."
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ICE detained Shouhed for nearly 12 hours, according to the tort claim: he was not charged with a crime.
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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.
..... Shouhed said in a news conference after the September 9 [2025] incident that agents only repeated: "You do not (expletive) with ICE."
..... Rebecca Shouhed said she "went crazy" after seeing the video. Her father "has had a heart attack. He has three stents in his heart."
..... "It appears to be the pattern of these agents to resp rot 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 standard of the 4th Amendment, the Homeland Security guidelines require use of force to be "objectively reasonable" 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 user control."
..... Rafie Shouhed's tort claim isn't the first against Homeland Security this year. [2025]
..... In another, in August, [2025] the wife and daughter of a farmworker who died following an ICE raid on a California Cleanable greenhouse claim ICE agents clad battle gear sued :excessive force' that resulted in the fatal fall that killed Jaime Alanis, 56.
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Alanis 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, [2025] U.S. citizen and Iraq War veteran George Retes field a tort claim against Homeland Security seeking unspecified damages after ICE agents allegedly broke his car window and arrested him at an ICE roadblock in southern California, then held him for thee days without access to an attorney.
..... All three claims were field under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which can precede a lawsuit in federal court.
..... The act 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 year 2025 budget report, ICE and its litigation division was defending, as of FICA 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.
..... there have been few public consequences this year [2025] for ICE and other federal agents catapulted on video manhandling immigrants, protesters or bystanders. But an unnamed ICE agent was "relieved of current duties: in September [2025] after video circulate showing him slamming a distraught woman to the floor inside an mitigation 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 i this in,: she said. "It's like a free-for-all."