The incident was captured by multiple reporters on the scene Thursday. A video posted by Elaad Eliahu of the conservative Timcast News network shows Moreta-Galarza’s husband—who had appeared for a court hearing with his family as part of their legal application for asylum—being wrestled away from his family by several masked agents as he attempts to cling to them. After ripping him away, three agents are shown dragging him out the door.
In another video, Moreta-Galarza is seen tearfully pleading in Spanish with one of the ICE agents, who is wearing a blue flannel shirt, a baseball cap, and no mask. He is shown repeatedly shouting “adios” at her, telling her to leave. When she moves toward him, he quickly grabs her and flings her across the room, through a crowd of photographers, and into the opposite wall. He then grabs her again and pushes her to the ground.
After she rises to her feet, the agent shoves Moreta-Galarza into the arms of security guards who escort her from the building.
Though Eliahu’s post described the man arrested as an “illegal alien,” ProPublica‘s Till Eckert, who was at the scene and spoke with Moreta-Galarza after the fact, reported that she “was seeking asylum with her family,” which is legal under U.S. law.
The incident occurred at 26 Federal Plaza, a federal building that houses an immigration courthouse and a makeshift detention facility in which migrants have been shown to be living in wretched conditions recently. Last week, more than 70 demonstrators, including several state lawmakers, were arrested during a protest at the facility.
“For the past two weeks, I’ve been going to the same New York City immigration courthouse,” Eckert said. “Nearly every time, I see ICE agents arresting immigrants. Today, a woman was slammed to the ground after begging officials not to take her husband away.”
Eckert reported that Moreta-Galarza’s injuries from the encounter required her to go to the hospital, where she has since been discharged.
The arrest is part of an increasing trend under the second Trump administration of immigrants being detained, often violently, while attempting to follow the legal process by appearing in court for immigration hearings.
As Stateline reported in August, ICE has increasingly been using a new, “unexpected legal tactic” to lure immigrants: “Rather than pursue a deportation case, it is convincing judges to dismiss immigrants’ cases—thus depriving the immigrants of protection from arrest and detention—then taking them into custody.”
While some are undocumented entrants, many of those snatched up in these courthouse arrests are legal applicants for asylum.
Eckert explained that “these sorts of actions were outside the norm historically for ICE agents.”
“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,” he said.
While the Trump administration often describes those arrested by ICE as “the worst of the worst,” immigration data as of September 7 showed just over 70% of those currently detained have no criminal convictions. On Friday, The Guardian reported that a plurality of people currently in ICE custody have not even been charged with crimes.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said that Moreta-Galarza “fled to my office for safety after she was assaulted by this [ICE] agent in an egregious act of excessive force.”
In a recorded interview after the incident, Goldman said his office would “continue to follow this particular story because it is just one example of too many where we have these secret police officers who are attacking our communities with excessive violence, excessive force, and they just think that they can do it with impunity because nobody is holding them accountable.”
Social media users later identified another video outside the same court in August, which appeared to show the same ICE agent forcibly prying a crying young girl away from her father as he is arrested and his family watched in tears.
In a statement provided to CBS News on Friday, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, called the agent’s conduct toward Moreta-Galarza “unacceptable.”
“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,” she said.
New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who has been arrested twice at the facility—once in June while escorting an immigrant out of his court hearing and again last week while protesting the facility—expressed outrage at the treatment of Moreta-Galarza and her family.
“An ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital,” Lander said. “Seconds earlier, her husband had been abducted by masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, did not give any lawful grounds for his detention.”
“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,” Lander continued. “We will not stop bearing witness, stop condemning them, or stop doing all we can to stand up to this lawless behavior.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, called the agent’s behavior “sickening,” and said, “the fact that Mayor [Eric] Adams has rolled out the red carpet for ICE is a stain on our city.”
After being discharged from the hospital, Moreta-Galarza spoke about her experience to reporters.
“Over [in Ecuador], they beat us there too,” she said in Spanish. “I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me.”
