‘They treated us like animals’

Monica Moreta Galarza felt relieved after her husband’s routine immigration hearing at New York City’s 26 Federal Plaza.

A judge had ordered Rubén Abelardo Ortiz López to return to court in May, and she believed that meant a reprieve from his potential deportation to Ecuador.

Instead, as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom with their children, she was torn from her husband’s arms and thrown to the ground by immigration officers as they detained him.

“One of them charged at me so aggressively that I was terrified, and he ended up throwing me to the ground,” Ms Moreta Galarza told BBC News Mundo in Spanish. “They treated us like animals.”

The incident, which has since gone viral, led to one immigration agent being temporarily suspended. But it is not an isolated occurrence. The BBC witnessed similar incidents at the court house, while others – including an aggressive encounter between Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the media – have sparked public outcry.

ICE’s operations inside the building have created a charged, tense environment, attorneys said.

“I would honestly sum it up as just traumatic,” said Allison Cutler, a New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) attorney who works at 26 Federal Plaza.

“It’s traumatic for the clients we’re serving, for the families getting ripped apart.”

While many of the detentions at 26 Federal Plaza are swift and non-violent, reporters and lawyers have witnessed several chaotic episodes in recent weeks.

On a Tuesday in late August, the BBC watched as a dozen officers waiting outside a courtroom descended on a man, two women and a small boy. They quickly detained the man, and a melee ensued as the group fought to stay together.

The crying woman, clinging to the detained man, was wrenched away by a federal officer – who appeared to be the same man who pulled Ms Moreta Galarza from her husband – as the man was carted off.

The judge closed the courtroom and, as a result, the BBC could not verify details of the case. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not provide details of the man’s current status, but stated that the agency “takes its responsibility to protect children seriously”.

They added that ICE gives parents the option of being removed with their children or having them placed with a designated individual.

After the images of the incident with Ms Moreta Galarza spread on social media, DHS reported that the officer involved in the incident had been disciplined.

Then last week, immigration officers were captured on video shoving two journalists to the ground as they tried to document a possible detention. One of the journalists could not get up, and was transported to the hospital.

“Nothing like this has happened with journalists before,” Olga Fedorova, the other photojournalist thrown to the floor, told the BBC. Ms Fedorova frequently reports from the building and said that before the incident, “we were able to work with federal agents, around federal agents with no incidents 99% of the time”.

DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the BBC in a statement that officers were making an arrest when they were “swarmed by agitators and members of the press, which obstructed operations”.

Ms McLaughlin said that “officers repeatedly told the crowd of agitators and journalists to get back, move, and get out of the elevator”.

Chaotic encounters with government officials have played out multiple times in the lower Manhattan building this year, as immigration courts become key sites of a mass deportation initiative ordered by the Trump administration.

Half of the 3,320 immigrants ICE has detained in the New York City area between Trump’s inauguration and the end of July were arrested at 26 Federal Plaza, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. The numbers suggest the building’s immigration courts and offices are a primary engine of the administration’s deportation plans in America’s biggest city.

About three quarters of people arrested at 26 Federal Plaza since Trump’s inauguration did not have past criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, the Deportation Data Project numbers suggest.

Officers routinely pull multiple detainees from their hearings, without giving them the chance to speak to lawyers.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Benjamin Remy, a NYLAG lawyer who spends several days a week working with immigrants at Federal Plaza.

Many immigrants no longer show up to court, he said. At one August hearing, a man with a criminal record failed to appear. The judge therefore ordered him removed from the country and threw out his asylum case.

His attendance may not have changed the outcome; immigration enforcement was assembled outside that courtroom as well.

Non-citizens in the US without a visa or similar documentation have always been subject to removal, said Triciah Claxton, supervising attorney with Safe Passage, an immigration rights group focused on minors.

“There used to be a concentrated effort on those who might have had criminal histories or prior arrests,” said Ms Claxton, whose clients mostly appear virtually to avoid detention.

But now, she said, that net appears to have widened.

“You see a lot of people who are in the process – they have asylum claims pending, they have other forms of relief pending – are still being taken in,” Ms Claxton said.

Legal experts say this is an abuse of the courts system and puts immigrants into an impossible position. If they turn up for court hearings, as they are instructed to do, they could be arrested. But if they skip their court date, a judge could automatically order their deportation.

The government argues it has broad authority to detain people who are in the US illegally.

The administration says it is removing dangerous criminals from the country, and the White House and Department of Homeland Security frequently tout the arrests and detentions of undocumented migrants with violent criminal histories.

It says it makes arrests in immigration court for safety reasons.

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence. We know who we are targeting ahead of time,” an agency official said in a statement to BBC.

A New York Times/Siena poll found that the majority of respondents, 54%, supported deporting people who are here illegally. Over half (51%) felt the government was targeting the right people.

In the case of Rubén Abelardo Ortiz López, whose wife Ms Moreta Galarza was pushed to the floor, the government says he was a violent criminal, and that it was justified in arresting him at court.

Ortiz López entered the country illegally on 20 March 2024 and was wanted after being arrested on 18 June for “assault and criminal obstruction of airway or bloodstream”.

“President Trump and Secretary (of Homeland Security Kristi) Noem will not allow criminal illegal aliens to terrorize American citizens,” the statement added.

“If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will never return.”

But for Ms Moreta Galarza, the incident at the courthouse reminded her of the injustices she says she fled in her home country of Ecuador.

“I suffered a lot in my country. I had no protection and the authorities there didn’t care,” she tells BBC News Mundo.

She adds that she never thought the same thing would happen to her in the US.

“It’s very ugly. I feel like I’m worthless now.”