A federal immigration officer was “relieved of his duties” and is under investigation after he shoved an Ecuadorean woman whose husband had been arrested and pushed her to the floor at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan, the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday.
The altercation took place on Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza, the epicenter of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in New York City, and was captured in videos that spread rapidly on social media and beyond. The footage set off an outcry from New York City officials who denounced the behavior of the officer, who has not been identified, and demanded that he be disciplined.
The videos show an officer pushing the woman, who was crying in a crowded hallway, shortly after federal agents arrested her husband, who had shown up at the courthouse for an asylum hearing.
“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE. “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.”
Ms. McLaughlin declined to elaborate when asked if the officer had been suspended or fired, saying, “that’s being determined pending investigation.”
The videos showed ICE agents arresting the man as his wife and young daughter clung to him and his son watched.
After the agents pried the family apart and led the man away, the woman yelled, “You guys don’t care about anything!” in Spanish at an agent. The agent told her, “Adios, adios.”
She put a hand on his chest, and he shoved her. When she tried to grab onto him, he pushed her down.
The woman, whom ProPublica identified as Monica Moreta-Galarza, was taken to a hospital after hitting her head and discharged shortly after, according to the news outlet. The details of her husband’s legal status and the circumstances that led to his arrest remained unclear on Friday.
Ms. Moreta-Galarza told ProPublica that the family had been beaten in Ecuador, adding, “I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me.”
As Mr. Trump moves to fulfill his campaign promise of enacting mass deportations, federal agents, often masked and in plain clothes, are patrolling immigration courts to detain migrants appearing for routine hearings.
They have arrested hundreds of people at immigration courts in New York City, where migrants typically go to plead their case before a judge if they are facing deportation, as well as to apply for asylum and other legal statuses.
The administration has cast the effort as a convenient way to arrest migrants in the country illegally without having to send agents into the streets.
The courthouse arrests have led to the detention of migrants who do not have criminal records and who have pending asylum claims, leading to concerns about due process and to lawsuits challenging the practice.
Some of the arrests have turned chaotic, producing wrenching scenes of parents being separated from children, and volatile clashes with agents.
The arrests have quickly filled temporary holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza that have been denounced as overcrowded and unsanitary.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration in the New York region.
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