Thousands of people withstood freezing temperatures and high winds in New York City on Friday to protest the ongoing crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents around the country, including the detention of a 5-year-old boy near Minneapolis this week. The gathering, which began with a demonstration in Union Square in Manhattan, continued with an evening march through the streets.
“I mean, it’s all so gut-punching,” said Gina Cirrito, 47, a co-founder of an organization that supports asylum-seeking families. “But the photo of that little boy in his Spider-Man backpack and little bunny hat — it just, it really hit really deep. My heart broke.”
Ms. Cirrito was walking on 14th Street just after sunset, part of a crowd of protesters that stretched from curb to curb for four blocks. She held a cardboard sign that read “Sweet Liam, we’re so sorry.”
Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy, was photographed as immigration agents detained him and his father in a suburb of Minneapolis on Tuesday.
In the last year, according to a New York Times analysis, the Trump administration has arrested and deported about 230,000 people from inside the country and a further 270,000 at the border, as the number of people trying to cross the Southwest border fell to record lows. President Trump has deployed thousands of ICE agents to cities and states led by Democrats in what he has described as an effort to crack down on crime and illegal immigration, and which critics have called unnecessary and inflammatory instigations to violence.
On Friday, many of the protesters held signs with pictures of Liam. By 4:30 p.m., about 4,000 people appeared to nearly fill Union Square. The march began at 5 p.m., as protesters moved west on 14th Street to the sound of “Don’t Stop Believing,” the rock anthem by Journey. As the sky grew dark, temperatures sank and marchers walked north, the crowd seemed to keep growing.
The mood vacillated between defiance and ebullience. Some protesters coasted on roller skates. Hundreds raised their fists.
Marchers stopped outside the offices of Palantir, a data analysis company, where many chanted “Palantir out of New York.” The march stopped again in front of the Home Depot store on 23rd Street, where people chanted “Shame on you” as police officers guarded the entrance. Both were targeted to protest what march organizers described as the corporations’ support for the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
Murad Awawdeh, an organizer of the march, said Mr. Trump and members of his administration “have been parading around this country, saying what they’re doing, and that their actions come down to safety and security.”
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But “we know that that is not true,” said Mr. Awawdeh, who is president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “It is about cruelty.”
The crowd included local elected and former leaders, including Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Brad Lander, the former city comptroller, who is a Democrat and supported Mayor Zohran Mamdani during his campaign last year. During the rally in Union Square, organizers urged New York legislators to pass bills that would fund emergency legal resources for immigrants and limit the ability of local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal agents.
“They’re kidnapping people,” said Barbara Augsburger, 67, an environmental educator who lives in the East Village. “It’s insane. We don’t want to live like that.”
Another protester, Marilyn Vogtdowny, said she had felt compelled to march in the cold because of images of masked federal agents arresting American citizens on residential streets.
“It feels identical to other authoritarian regimes,” said Ms. Vogtdowny, 82. “This is really about defending democracy.”
Natalia Navas, 38, said some of her relatives warned her not to attend Friday’s march. She was born in the United States, she said, but many of her worried relatives are immigrants, including her parents, who moved from El Salvador.
“Even if you are a citizen, you feel afraid to go to the supermarket because it feels like they are just targeting brown people,” Ms. Navas said. “We are the fabric of New York, and they forgot that part.”
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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