‘They are grabbing people.’ L.A. and Orange County car wash workers targeted by federal immigration raids
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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 eighth-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 nine 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 five of these locations — some in unmarked vehicles.
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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.
Federal immigration agents raided four businesses on Friday, including a Home Depot in the Westlake neighborhood and Ambiance Apparel in the garment district in downtown L.A. in a crackdown that led to the arrests of dozens of people and ignited a weekend of civil unrest that has led to the controversial deployment of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles.
Industries with a low-wage, mostly immigrant workforce appear to be targets, as well as work sites that afford direct access to workers.
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 raided over the weekend and early this week, according to CLEAN.
Both Westchester Hand Wash and the Culver City car wash were hit twice, on consecutive days.
On Wednesday, La Puente Car Wash and Pacific Auto Spa in Whittier, as well as Galaxy Auto Detail and Firestone Hand Car Wash in Downey were also hit.
The Times independently verified several of these raids by interviewing witnesses and family members — and reviewing video footage.
Mehmet Aydogan, owner of Westchester Hand Wash, 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 Navarro.
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’re 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 since it opened more than two decades ago, hired by the previous family that owned it. Aydogan took over the business about two years ago.
“These are all longtime workers. They have children, they have families, this is sad,” Aydogan said. “The reason they were here was to take somebody, anybody, this was the plan, I believe.”
A video clip posted to social media of the Magnolia Car Wash immigration action shows what appears to be the business manager arguing with and cursing at agents.
“Don’t sign a single paper,” he yells at one of the workers being detained.
Video obtained by The Times shows a masked agent in jeans and a T-shirt leading one handcuffed man away from Pacific Auto Spa at about 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
The handcuffed man wore a red shirt, which is the uniform for workers at the car wash. Jose Antonio Martin Lastor, 20, was among several workers taken from Pacific Auto Spa, his family members said.
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 of the Sunday raid 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.
Staff writer Melissa Gomez contributed to this report.
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