The Guardian reports:

The 79-year-old owner of a Los Angeles area car wash is seeking $50m in damages from the federal government after US immigration authorities allegedly slammed the US citizen to the ground and detained him for almost 12 hours.

Rafie Ollah Shouhed suffered significant injuries during an immigration raid this month, his attorney said, including broken ribs and a traumatic brain injury. The agents “violated the Constitution, California civil rights law, and basic human decency”, V James DeSimone, a civil rights attorney representing the man, said in a statement on Thursday.

“These masked agents’ conduct was lawless, reckless and cruel,” DeSimone said. “If this can happen in broad daylight to an American senior citizen who committed no crime, it can happen to anyone. This was not law enforcement, it was an assault on civil rights and our democracy cannot survive if federal agents operate above the law.”

The incident comes as Donald Trump’s administration continues its aggressive mass deportation campaign with raids across southern California. Operations are on the rise after the US supreme court lifted restrictions on such activity earlier this month, allowing agents to continue sweeping raids, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has vowed to “flood the zone in Los Angeles”.

Meanwhile, numerous US citizens have been swept up in immigration operations in the state and the federal government is facing lawsuits and legal claims over its conduct. The mother of a 15-year-old US citizen who federal agents detained at gunpoint is seeking $1m in damages and accusing the Trump administration of false imprisonment and “unconstitutional racial profiling”. [Continue reading…]