A federal immigration agent has been relieved of duties after shoving an Ecuadorian woman to the ground in a courthouse hallway, an incident witnessed by a ProPublica reporter and condemned by lawmakers as an example of escalating violence under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The altercation occurred on Thursday at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building, a government building housing immigration courts and ICE offices in Manhattan.
ProPublica reporter Till Eckert, who has been monitoring the courthouse for weeks, said the incident began when masked ICE agents arrested the woman’s husband after a routine asylum hearing.
“For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been going to the same NY immigration courthouse. Nearly every time, I see ICE agents arresting immigrants,” said Eckert. “Today, a woman was slammed to the ground after begging officials not to take her husband away.”
Video of the confrontation shows the woman, identified by Eckert as Monica Moreta-Galarza, and her young daughter clinging to her husband as agents lead him away.
After the arrest, an upset Moreta-Galarza confronted an agent, telling him in Spanish, “You guys don’t care about anything.” The agent responded, “Adios, adios,” before shoving her when she placed a hand on his chest. The push sent her stumbling down the hallway and onto the floor.
Eckert stayed with Moreta-Galarza until she was discharged from the hospital after hitting her head. The reporter recounted the asylum seeker’s despair in the aftermath.
“Over [in Ecuador], they beat us there too. I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me,” Eckert said she told him in Spanish.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced the officer involved was under investigation.
“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement. “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.”
The same agent violently accosted a child in the hallway weeks earlier, as documented by Joseph Gallina, founder of Call to Activism.
The incident has sparked outrage from New York officials.
Congressman Dan Goldman, whose district includes the courthouse, called it an example of “secret police officers who are attacking our communities with excessive violence…and they just think that they can do it with impunity, because nobody is holding them accountable.”
Eckert noted that the aggressive tactics represent a sharp departure from past practice.
“These sorts of actions were outside the norm historically for ICE agents,” he said. “Yet under Trump’s second term, immigration courts have shifted from being seen as relatively safe venues into places where immigrants face the risk of surveillance, arrest and sometimes even violence.”
According to the reporter, the administration’s immigration crackdown has proceeded with diminished oversight.
“The Trump administration has continually escalated its immigration crackdown. And the oversight arm that would typically keep DHS in check, its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, was dismantled,” Eckert said.
The courthouse arrests are part of a broader enforcement strategy that has seen ICE agents frequently detain immigrants at their scheduled court appearances.
For asylum seekers like Monica Moreta-Galarza, who followed legal procedures to present her case, the courthouse has become a site of fear rather than refuge.
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