One year after federal agents shot him during an attempted arrest in South Los Angeles, TikTok streamer Carlitos Ricardo Parias — known online as "Richard LA" — has filed a federal claim seeking $50 million — the first step toward suing the agencies that arrested him.
Civil rights attorney Denise Gastelum announced the claim on Tuesday. It is an administrative claim against the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the other agencies involved in Parias's arrest — the step federal law requires before suing the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The shooting happened on the morning of October 21, 2025, in South Los Angeles. Agents with an administrative immigration arrest warrant had been watching Parias, a Mexican national authorities say was in the country illegally and had previously escaped custody. When he left his home and got into his car, they followed and boxed him in on East 20th Street near Washington Boulevard.
What happened next is where the two sides split. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Parias rammed the vehicles in front of and behind him, that an agent tried and failed to break his driver's-side window, and that as Parias spun his tires and the car's rear fishtailed, an agent opened fire. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said ICE agents fired "defensive shots," adding, "These are the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest." Essayli put it bluntly: "Vehicles are deadly weapons. Anyone who uses them against federal agents risks arrest, imprisonment, and life-threatening injuries."
Parias was shot in the elbow. A deputy U.S. Marshal assisting the arrest was hit in the hand by a ricocheting bullet. Both injuries were non-life-threatening. Parias's attorneys tell a different story about the body-camera footage. "What we see through body camera is the indiscriminate attack by an ICE agent," Gastelum said, "shooting at a human being who's in his vehicle with his hands up, simply asking, 'Why are you detaining me?'" His immigration attorney, Carlos Jurado, described Parias as a calm man with two U.S.-born children and no criminal record — a citizen journalist whose "Richard Noticias LA" TikTok accounts, with more than 340,000 followers combined, document police and immigration enforcement across South LA, work City Councilmember Curren Price's office had formally recognized.
"Shooting at a human being who's in his vehicle with his hands up, simply asking, 'Why are you detaining me?'" — Denise Gastelum, Parias's civil rights attorney
Prosecutors charged Parias with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon and damaging government property; he pleaded not guilty. Released on bond, he was taken straight into immigration custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center — and there the government's case collapsed. On December 27, 2025, U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, finding the government had released body-camera footage late and denied Parias access to his attorneys in detention. "The government's inability to manage the overlapping actions of its various agencies while aggressively advancing Mr. Parias's criminal case led to a situation ripe for constitutional violations, which indeed occurred," the judge wrote.
The U.S. Attorney's office said it strongly disagreed, and the government is appealing the dismissal to the Ninth Circuit. A DHS spokesperson said: "DHS strongly disagrees with decision to dismiss this case for assaulting a federal officer. All illegal aliens in detention have access to their lawyers. No one is denied access to counsel." Parias, however, remains in custody a year after the shooting — detention his attorneys call unlawful. "He should not be detained," Jurado said. "Whatever criminal charges they brought against him have been dismissed." The $50 million claim now puts the same fight on a new track: not whether Parias broke the law, but what the government owes him for the morning its agents shot him.