A video filmed inside New York’s immigration offices has sparked outrage after it showed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent violently slamming a distressed woman to the floor in front of her sobbing children.
The disturbing footage, released by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, captured the chaotic moments that unfolded just seconds after the woman’s husband was detained by plainclothes ICE agents at the Federal Plaza immigration offices.
According to CBS News, the woman, speaking in Spanish, begged the agent not to leave her behind. “Please take me too,” she pleaded, sobbing as the officers held her husband. “They are going to kill him. They pulled my hair. You guys don’t care about anything.”
The video shows her grabbing at the arm of one of the agents. His response was immediate and violent. He pushed her against a wall before slamming her hard onto the ground. As the woman cried out, the agent could be heard muttering “adios, adios” while forcing her away. Witnesses rushed forward as her young daughter screamed for her mother.
Court security eventually intervened, pulling the shaken woman aside. According to Lander, she was taken away in an ambulance and hospitalized, though her exact condition remains unclear.
Lander, who has been an outspoken critic of the agency, condemned the incident outright. He connected the episode in New York to what he described as a larger pattern of “political violence.”
Referencing a deadly shooting in Texas just a day before, he said, “Let’s be clear: every day, masked ICE agents are acting violently against our neighbors, illegally abducting them, holding them in cruel and inhumane conditions. Treating them as less-than-human, and not deserving due process. We want ICE out of New York City. And we won’t stop showing up until they stop abducting our neighbors.”
New York Congressman Dan Goldman also witnessed the aftermath. He revealed that the family went to his office seeking help, and he denounced what had just unfolded. Calling it “an egregious act of excessive force,” Goldman wrote on X: “This is unacceptable conduct from this ICE agent. Secretary Noem must take appropriate disciplinary action and implement measures to prevent this from happening again.”
The incident began moments earlier, when masked agents detained the woman’s husband at the courthouse. Video of that arrest shows officers in plain clothing pulling him away from his family without issuing any clear explanation or presenting a warrant. The man is seen clinging to his wife and two children as agents drag him into a hallway and push him down the corridor toward a processing center.
Lander emphasized the brutal nature of the separation: “He was ripped out of her arms right in front of the family.”
According to The New York Times, the couple and their children are originally from Ecuador and arrived in the United States last year. Lander confirmed that the woman is a mother of two and underscored the human toll of such arrests.
On the same day of the New York altercation, protesters gathered outside the courthouse under the banner “New Yorkers Against ICE.” Demonstrators denounced the agency and the larger crackdown they said has intensified under the Trump administration. Addressing the crowd, Lander declared: “We are not going to stop showing up until they stop abducting our neighbors.”
The confrontation erupted less than 24 hours after 29-year-old Joshua Jahn opened fire at an ICE facility in Dallas, killing one immigrant and injuring two others. According to FBI Director Kash Patel, investigators recovered a handwritten note at the scene in which Jahn wrote: “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think, ‘is there a sniper with AP (armor piercing) rounds on that roof?’” Bullets used in the attack were reportedly inscribed with the phrase “ANTI-ICE.”
The Dallas shooting has added another layer of tension to the national debate about agency. Conservative leaders have tried to use the unfortunate incident to their favor, accusing Democrats and immigrant advocates of fueling hostility with their rhetoric. They argue that the environment of constant criticism has resulted in violent action.
Regardless of what both parties are saying, agents keeps terrorizing citizens every day and it is common people who have to bear the brunt of their ruthless tactics.
