Seven workers swept up in a federal immigration raid at an Allston car wash last November are now taking on the government, filing a federal tort claim that accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement of unlawful, racially motivated arrests and abusive treatment in detention.
The administrative claim, filed Wednesday by Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of seven of the nine people detained, argues that ICE agents targeted workers based on where they were employed and how they looked rather than on any specific, individualized suspicion.
What the complaint alleges
According to GBH News, the complaint is filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act and seeks roughly 1 million dollars per worker. It accuses federal agents of false arrest, false imprisonment, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The filing characterizes the operation as an “aggressive, militarized, and indiscriminate raid” and says agents made no meaningful effort to identify individual workers before seizing them.
The Cambridge Street sweep
Just after 10 a.m. on November 4, about 20 ICE vehicles pulled up to Allston Car Wash, blocking the Cambridge Street entrance. An officer identified in the complaint as Special Agent Jhon Coleman presented an I-9 subpoena and told managers that no one would be taken into custody “unless they attempted to flee or acted ‘funny,’” The Boston Globe reports. The complaint says agents then rounded up several employees who were cleaning vehicles without first asking questions or indicating they were looking for particular people.
The group taken into custody included five women and four men. Most were later released on bond, but only after spending weeks in detention, according to the filing.
Conditions in custody
The complaint describes cramped and intimidating processing conditions at an ICE facility in Burlington. The five women were allegedly held together in a single cell with no beds, given only one aluminum blanket each, while the men were kept with several other male detainees. Some workers were later transferred to facilities in Plymouth, Vermont and Texas.
GBH News reports that several detainees were denied timely access to necessary medication or faced dangerous gaps in medical care, and that at least two people were held even after telling agents they had legal status.
Legal path forward
Lawyers for Civil Rights submitted the Federal Tort Claims Act filing on Wednesday, The Boston Globe notes. An FTCA claim is a required first step before suing the federal government in court. Federal guidance gives agencies six months to review such claims before claimants may file a lawsuit in federal court. If the government does not resolve the matter within that window, the workers can move ahead with litigation.
The complaint seeks damages and legal fees and casts the filing as part of a broader pushback against workplace-focused immigration enforcement tactics.
Local reaction and context
The November raid rattled the neighborhood, and the new claim has brought the anger back to the surface. Local elected officials and immigrant advocates sharply criticized the sweep at the time. Reporting last fall also revealed that a Boston University student had repeatedly called ICE about the car wash, a revelation that sparked heavy backlash in the community.
Boston.com and WCVB covered the political fallout and the neighborhood vigils that followed the arrests last November.
The new filing turns long-running complaints from community groups and the workers’ attorneys into a formal legal challenge. They argue that the arrests were indiscriminate and that ICE tactics trampled constitutional rights. For now, the ball is in the federal government’s court under the FTCA review process, but the workers and their lawyers are clearly preparing for a longer fight.
