Noemi Ciau visited Westchester Hand Wash on Sunday to drop off a pizza to her husband, who works there as a cleaner. It was around noon when they met and chatted a few minutes.
Ciau was taking their daughter shopping for a dress and shoes to wear to her 8th grade graduation later that week, she told him.
“If you need money or anything else, call me,” she recalls him telling her.
Ciau wouldn’t see her husband again, because 52-year-old Jesus Cruz was taken mere hours later by federal immigration agents who raided the car wash.
The business was among at least five car washes in Los Angeles and Orange counties that have been targeted in recent days, according to CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, a labor advocacy nonprofit that has been able to verify these raids through community reports and footage on social media.
CLEAN has determined that at least 26 people were taken by immigration enforcement agents at these locations — some in unmarked vehicles.
The vast majority were workers, although one customer was also picked up at Culver City Express Hand Car Wash and Detail during a Sunday raid.
Ciau, an Inglewood resident, spoke alongside other family members of detained workers at a news conference held by CLEAN on Wednesday morning at the Culver City car wash. She said that she relied on her husband to take care of their children in the evenings because she works mornings at LAX.
“He was my backbone,” she said “Who’s going to pick up my kids. Who’s going to take them to music class?”
“Now her father can’t even be there for her graduation,” Ciau said.
Flor Melendrez, executive director of CLEAN, said her organization has been scrambling to identify people detained and keep up with new car wash raids in real time.
“The agents are armed. They are grabbing people and putting them in vehicles, which is why we are calling them ‘kidnappings’ because they are not identifying themselves,” Melendrez said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Besides Westchester Hand Wash and Culver City Express Hand Car Wash and Detail, Crenshaw Imperial Car Wash, Touch and Glow Car Wash in Whittier and Magnolia Car Wash in Orange County were also targeted, Melendrez said.
Both Westchester Hand Wash and the Culver City car wash were hit twice, on consecutive days.
In Westchester, several workers who had run on Sunday managed to escape, but four were arrested and taken by the agents, according to the car wash’s owner, Mehmet Aydogan. Two other workers were taken when agents returned the next day, Aydogan said.
Aydogan said in an interview that he told the agents he could answer any of their questions, that he had documents for his workers, but they were uninterested.
Video footage obtained and reviewed by The Times shows Aydogan speaking calmly to an agent as another arrests a worker named Miguel.
Aydogan tells the agents they had already visited the car wash the previous day. One agent joked about whether the agents from the day before had gotten a car wash.
The manager replied, “No. You guys didn’t get anything. You just taking our people who’s working really hard.”
“We just work here, we’re not criminals,” Aydogan says in the video.
Westchester Hand Wash is now closed, after being hit two days in a row. The business needs at least 14 workers to function, and with six workers taken and others scared to work, they were forced to close, Aydogan said.
Some of the workers taken had been employed at the car wash for more than two decades, he said.
A video clip posted to social media of the Magnolia Car Wash immigration action shows what appears to be the business manager arguing with agents.
At the Culver City car wash, federal agents blocked both exits with their vehicles, said 15-year-old Brian Vasquez in an interview.
Video footage shows Brian shouting at agents as his 11-year-old brother sobs. Another video clip posted to social media shows his father, Arturo Vasquez, who had panicked and run, sitting on the sidewalk across the street, being yanked up by the collar of his shirt by a uniformed agent.
Arturo had come to the car wash with his family as a customer.
Family members said they did not hear from Arturo and did not know where he had been taken until Tuesday, when he called from an El Paso, Texas, number and told them he had been taken to a detention facility in Texas.
“Right now his sons are very traumatized, the younger one hasn’t been able to sleep,” said Lizeth Garcia, who is Arturo’s niece. “I feel very heartbroken, and basically useless. We are seeing our family member being mistreated and there’s nothing we can do about it. There is a lot of confusion and all of us are scared.”
Brian said he’s been unsettled and angered after reading hateful, anti-immigrant comments on social media under the clips that have been posted of his father’s arrest.
“I just want my dad back,” he said.
The post ‘They are grabbing people.’ L.A. and Orange County car wash workers targeted by federal immigration raids appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
