This Is What An ICE Raid Looks Like

Exclusive to The Banter: We spoke with Peter Valli, a photographer who captured an ICE raid at a car wash in Los Angeles.

by Ben Cohen

Yesterday I spoke with Peter Valli, a California-based photographer who captured an ICE raid at his local carwash in West Los Angeles.

The footage is nightmarish. Masked men with guns storm into an everyday workplace to detain suspected undocumented immigrants. They show no warrants, read no rights, and leave with the shocked suspects—presumably to a processing center.

Here is what Peter shot:

Here’s how Peter described what he filmed in his own words (lightly edited for flow):

“I was parking to go to my gym, which is a block away. And I was parking on a street where it's common to have traffic for the car wash where cars race by to get in line next, because there's always a big line.”

As Peter watched the traffic build up, something unusual caught his eye.

“A big black Lincoln, I think SUV came flying at me and I figured it was like an Uber driver because there's a lot of Uber driving. I tracked him going down, maybe the end of the block, which I was maybe like three or four hundred feet. And then I noticed a bunch of other different colored SUVs with different state plates pull up. And then I saw the vest and I'm like, oh shit, is this happening?”

Realizing he was witnessing something serious, Peter decided to document it.

“I ran down there and I started filming from the outskirts. I wanted to reach out to someone that knew where I was, but I didn’t know how I would be accepted. And so I got a hold of my daughter, an attorney who happened to be staying at my house a few blocks away and let her know where I was.”

At first, Peter kept his distance, unsure how the agents would react to him filming. But the situation escalated quickly.

“They were kind of running around. So then they all kind of went back like they were going to get in their cars and they pulled out a guy who I've never seen in 30 years, who appears to be the manager. I've never seen him or at least I've never noticed him. Who appears to be the manager.

They're talking to him outside and all of a sudden they're like, ‘oh, there's more inside, there's more inside’. And then you can hear in the recording, ‘they're fighting, they're fighting’. I didn't see a fight. So then I'm like, I'm going for this.”

Peter followed the agents as they moved inside, capturing the moment on camera.

“I turned my camera back on right as that started happening. You see me follow them in kind of across the cars. And then we all start running in. It's actually my voice. That's a standard thing when I do when I get in cops or anybody. I announce myself, I'm just doing my job. I just want everybody to know I'm playing fair. So you play fair, I'll play fair. So I just followed them in and I started shooting.”

I asked Peter what it felt like—as someone born and raised in the neighborhood—to watch something like this unfold.

“That's pretty freaky, yeah,” he said. “Not what I'm used to having grown up here. It's kind of heartbreaking to see. It's heartbreaking to see these guys running scared. I know them. You know what I mean?

“This was, this is pretty foul,” he went on. “You heard the reactions of the people. I wonder about these guys that do this too. They probably came from other states and they're probably like, you know, ‘I'll show them in California.’ But they must feel like shit when they're doing it, you know, after a while.”

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