Widely shared video shows masked federal agents throwing several reporters to the floor inside an immigration courthouse in downtown Manhattan, days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer was suspended for tackling a crying woman and pinning her to the ground in the same building.
Video from inside 26 Federal Plaza, which serves as headquarters for several federal law enforcement agencies, shows masked agents trying to forcibly remove a journalist from an elevator while calling out “get out the f****** elevator.”
Another agent then shoves a photographer across the hall. A third photographer is then knocked to the floor; footage from photojournalist Stephanie Keith shows him grabbing his head in pain before emergency medical personnel arrive and put him in a neck brace and onto a stretcher.
Last week, a crying woman pleading for her husband’s release from ICE custody was hospitalized after an agent shoved her across the hall, pushed her to the ground and pinned her down on her back.
That incident was similarly captured by a large scrum of reporters and photographers who have been roaming the 12th floor of 26 Federal Plaza for months as the building emerged as a flashpoint for Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Dean Moses, the police bureau chief of amNewYork, was among reporters who followed a woman into an elevator bank Tuesday morning after she was apprehended by ICE.
“A couple of seconds after she goes into the elevator, two ICE agents go in after her,” Moses told the outlet. “They never identified themselves, they didn’t ask for her papers or her ID.”
Agents then grabbed Moses and tossed him from the elevator.
Another agent then shoved Olga Fedorova, a freelancer working for the Associated Press.
In the process, another photojournalist — L. Vural Elibol of the Anadolu Agency — was knocked to the ground, hitting his head on the floor.
Last week, a spokesperson for Homeland Security told The Independent that the agent who shoved an asylum seeker was “relieved of current duties” — but it’s unclear whether he is still on the job.
According to CBS News, the officer returned to duty after a preliminary review of the incident.
The agent’s conduct was “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Independent last week.
“Our ICE law enforcement are held to the highest professional standards and this officer is being relieved of current duties as we conduct a full investigation,” McLaughlin said at the time.
The incidents follow the Trump administration’s policy to swiftly arrest immigrants immediately after they leave their immigration court hearings. Immigration judges have been ordered by the Department of Justice to dismiss their cases, rendering them without legal status — and making them immediately vulnerable to arrest and removal from the country before they’ve had a chance to appeal.
The policy has created chaotic scenes of masked agents patrolling courthouse hallways and hauling away immigrants.
The majority of the more than 3,000 ICE arrests in New York City since Trump returned to the White House have taken place inside 26 Federal Plaza.
“This abuse of law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories must end,” Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday. “What the hell are we doing here?”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the “aggressive and violent treatment of immigrants, public officials, and members of the press at 26 Federal Plaza needs to stop, now.”
“This administration cannot harm others who are following the rules and exercising their constitutional rights,” she added.
Homeland Security did not return The Independent’s requests for comment.
The New York Immigration Coalition and other advocacy groups working with immigrants inside the facility have called on ICE and other federal law enforcement to withdraw from immigration courts.
“Whether it’s family members attending court, community members offering court watch support, or journalists exercising their constitutional right to document events, ICE has shown a blatant disregard for human dignity and safety,” according to New York Immigration Coalition president Murad Awawdeh.
Unlike federal district court judges, immigration court judges operate under the direction of the attorney general’s office. The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review issued guidance to immigration judges earlier this year to grant motions from government lawyers to immediately dismiss immigrants’ cases, making them easy targets for arrest.
Last month, a federal judge called the practice a “game of detention roulette” that violates due process.
Another federal judge last month blocked immigration authorities from rapidly deporting immigrants by using a fast-tracked removal process central to those arrests, warning that the government risks violating due process rights for people who have “long since entered” the country.
