The Trump administration said Friday that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent was placed on leave after he pushed a woman to the floor in the hallway of a courthouse in New York, with viral video of the incident sparking outcry.
“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of 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,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Hill.
Video shared on social media showed the confrontation at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, with a woman directly addressing an ICE agent after a man was separated and hauled away by masked officers. The woman and a girl can be seen clinging to the man before he was detained by federal agents.
Afterward, the woman confronted the ICE agent, telling him in Spanish, “You guys don’t care about anything.”
“Adios, adios,” the agent says in response as the woman appeared to put a hand on his chest.
The ICE agent is then seen shoving the woman, pushing her down a hallway and onto the ground. The agent then stands up and tells the woman to leave as the girl is crying. Other agents proceeded to ask officers to remove the woman from the building.
It is not clear from the video if there was other physical contact between the agent and the woman prior to her being shoved.
The altercation has sparked outcry from New York City officials and some congressional Democrats.
Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller who himself was detained by ICE agents earlier this year, said he was at 26 Federal Plaza when the incident took place. He said the 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,” Lander, a vocal critic of ICE, wrote. “She had to be taken to the hospital.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), whose district includes the courthouse, identified the woman as Monica. He said she “fled” to his office with her two children for “safety after she was assaulted by this @ICEgov agent in an egregious act of excessive force.”
“This is unacceptable conduct from this ICE agent. @Sec_Noem must take appropriate disciplinary action and implement measures to prevent this from happening again,” Goldman said in a Thursday post on social platform X, referring to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Goldman on Friday welcomed news of the agent being put on leave.
“The Secretary must take action to prevent something like this from happening again by DHS, here in NYC or anywhere in America,” he wrote.
The woman said she and her family came to the U.S. from Ecuador in 2024.
“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,” she told reporters after the incident, ProPublica reported.
The Manhattan building encompasses an ICE field office and immigration courts. There, ICE agents have arrested dozens of migrants this year who have shown up to court hearings, part of President Trump’s immigration agenda focused on deporting those who are in the country illegally.
