Carwasheros already had it tough; then ICE swooped in

Activists say at least 100 SoCal businesses have been raided since June

- GUSTAVO ARELLANO COLUMNIST

Photographs by GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times AN EMPLOYEE stands at the temporarily closed Westchester Hand Wash this summer after an ICE raid targeted the business.

The September morning that immigration agents grabbed Mercedes' husband was like a tragic prophecy fulfilled.

The El Salvador native narrowly had escaped when three coworkers were nabbed this summer during a raid at a car wash in Orange County. La migra stalked his dreams for weeks after. On the day they finally got him, Mercedes said her husband must have felt "a premonition" because he left his keys and phone in the family car.

We were driving up the 5 Freeway to a lawyer's appointment in Los Angeles County to try to bail out her husband from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. She requested The Times not share his name or her last name. But Mercedes wanted to share their story to highlight her husband's profession, one of the most dangerous for undocumented immigrants in Southern California right now.

Since President Trump uncorked his deportation deluge this summer, immigration agents have hit more than 100 car washes across Southern California and detained more than 340 workers. Videos of those raids frequently go viral on social media because of their grotesque spectacle: Armed, masked men chase middle-aged Latino men through car tunnels or vacuuming stations before piling on top of their target as if the worker were a fumbled football.

“Every time I open my Facebook, the video of my husband’s capture seems to come up,” the soft-spoken Mercedes said. She sat in the front passenger seat as Andrea Gutierrez drove. A wrinkled manila folder with her husband's birth certificate and tax returns was on Mercedes’ lap.

“He says, ‘If they deport me, will you go with me?’” Mercedes continued. ‘And I tell him, ‘No, you're going to fight.’”