By Diana Martinez, Editor and Gabriel Arizon
San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol
Just one day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to lift a federal court order that required immigration agents to have “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests, ICE agents descended onto the Northeast San Fernando Valley on Tuesday, Sept. 9, in at least three locations.
The ICE agents were emboldened to resume racial profiling – target people who look Latino, who speak Spanish and work at jobs believed to be frequently held by immigrants.
While the ruling doesn’t change the right to due process, for the workers who were arrested at the Valley Car Wash in Van Nuys and other locations, it didn’t appear that way.
Witnesses reported ICE agents raided the car wash about 10:00 a.m. and did not identify themselves nor provide any warrants. Following the raid a couple of employees who were not arrested held each other and cried.
The San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol spoke to Luis Huanosta at the Valley Car Wash, who confirmed that five people were arrested, including their manager.
“I was just right there in the back vacuuming in the cars … until I saw my colleague running away,” Huanosta said. “And I was like, ‘Why is he running?’ That’s when I turned around and [saw ICE agents] and thought, ‘Oh, this is happening. They’re here.’ It took me 10 seconds to process. My colleagues were running for their lives. One was on the floor getting detained.”
Huanosta almost got detained before he told the ICE agents that he was a U.S. citizen and was let go. His father also works at the car wash, but wasn’t present that day. But others weren’t as fortunate. He said that one coworker broke down afterwards because he saw his best friend getting detained.
“I’m gonna be really honest, my colleagues are scared,” Huanosta said. “We’re scared that they’re gonna come back again. We just don’t know when or what time. It impacted all of us.”
A nearby health center went on lockdown during the Van Nuys raid to protect its patients and employees. Businesses have started the practice of locking their doors and refusing entry to federal agents if they appear at their entrances and don’t produce a judicial warrant.
A short distance from the Valley Car Wash, about one mile away, in unmarked cars, agents pursued a car and surrounded the vehicle in the parking lot of Mariscos Corona Mexican restaurant on Kester and Sherman Way. Agents were reported to have smashed the car window and dragged two men out of the car. The agents were reported to have drawn their guns while a female passenger insisted her boyfriend’s immigration papers were in order.
The use of unmarked cars, agents who are poorly identified and brandishing weapons has increased concern about possible rogue bounty hunters who have arbitrarily detained and threatened community members who are sitting at bus stops, dropping off their kids at school, en route to work and attempting to go about their day.
In a third incident on Tuesday, The Home Depot on Foothill in the City of San Fernando was also targeted with ICE making at least two arrests.
On Monday, Mayor Bass condemned the Supreme Court ruling that has unleashed the raids to resume without restraint. She called them “Dangerous and Un-American,” and quoted Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who called the 6-3 vote by her fellow justices, “unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees.”
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor said.