Federal agent pushes woman to floor in immigration courthouse confrontation that sparks outrage

By Diego Mendoza, Taylor Galgano, Alex Stambaugh, CNN

(CNN) — Videos showing a federal agent shoving a woman to the ground during a confrontation at an immigration courthouse in New York on Thursday have prompted outrage and calls for disciplinary action.

In one video shared on social media, a woman and a girl are seen clinging with locked arms to a man, reportedly the woman’s husband, who is being detained, in a hallway of 26 Federal Plaza, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement District Office in Lower Manhattan.

One masked agent grabs her hair as someone says, “Just grab her, grab her and pull her away.” Moments after separating the woman and the man, she is removed from the hallway into a nearby room.

It’s unclear how long she was in the room.

The video resumes with her in the hallway speaking to a federal agent, saying “You guys don’t care about anything!” in Spanish. The agent says, “Adios, adios,” as the woman pleads and motions her hands towards the agent.

It is unclear from the video whether any physical contact was made between the agent and the woman before the agent grabs her and pushes her into a wall. The agent and the woman fall to the floor as the agent tries to force her down the hallway.

The agent then stands over her and says, “Leave!” in Spanish, and asks nearby officers to remove her from the building.

Several videos shared by other media outlets captured the interaction from different angles. In one video, court security officers were seen escorting the woman from the scene.

The altercation caught on camera has sparked outrage amongst Democratic city officials amid a growing concern nationally of ICE’s increasingly aggressive tactics to arrest immigrants in busy cities.

The federal building in Manhattan, where the interaction took place, has become the epicenter of immigration crackdown efforts in New York City. It is home to an immigration court, the FBI’s New York field office and other federal buildings, and has been a routine place where ICE agents apprehend migrants after court appearances.

US Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat whose district includes the courthouse, said in a statement on X that the woman – who he identified as Monica – and her two young children “fled to my office for safety after she was assaulted.”

He called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “take appropriate disciplinary action and implement measures to prevent this from happening again.”

Brad Lander, the city comptroller and frequent ICE critic who has previously been arrested for trying to prevent the agency from arresting migrants, said on X he was at the plaza when the incident took place.

“An ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids,” he wrote. “She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital.”

CNN has reached out to ICE, DHS and the offices of Rep. Goldman and Lander.

Lander said the masked ICE agents did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant and did not give any lawful grounds for detaining the man.

“Regardless of motive or targets, we must condemn political violence,” he wrote. “But 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.”

NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani called the incident “sickening” in a post on social media.

The woman, speaking to reporters after the interaction, said: “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.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.