NEW YORK (AP) — Federal agents grabbed and shoved journalists in a hallway outside a New York City immigration court on Tuesday, sending one to the hospital in the latest clash between authorities enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and members of the public seeking to observe and document their actions.
A visual journalist identified as L. Vural Elibol of the Turkish news agency Anadolu hit his head on the floor at 26 Federal
Plaza in Manhattan after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pushed one journalist off a public elevator and shoved another journalist to the floor, according to video and witnesses.
A bystander held Elibol’s head and a nurse treated him until an ambulance arrived, witnesses said. Video showed him in a neck brace as paramedics wheeled him out of the building on a stretcher. The other journalists, amNewYork police bureau chief Dean Moses and Olga Fedorova, a freelance photographer whose clients include The Associated Press, were not seriously injured.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin defended the agents’ actions, saying they were being “swarmed by agitators and members of the press, which obstructed operations.”
“Officers repeatedly told the crowd of agitators and journalists to get back, move, and get out of the elevator,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “Rioters and sanctuary politicians who encourage individuals to interfere with arrests are actively creating hostile environments that put officers, detainees and the public in harm’s way.”
A message seeking comment was left for the Anadolu news agency.
Moses said the situation escalated when masked agents grabbed him and shoved him from an elevator on the 12th floor as he was attempting to photograph them arresting a woman who had just left immigration court.
“I walked into the elevator behind them, and they started screaming at me," Moses told amNewYork. “Then they pushed me, grabbed me by my arms, and started pulling me out of the elevator. I tried to hold on, but I got shoved out.”
Video taken by photographer Stephanie Keith showed that during the struggle, another agent shoved Fedorova, who fell backward toward where Elibol lay on the floor.
Fedorova said photographers had worked in the hallway outside immigration court for months without incident. The agents making arrests Tuesday, she said, didn't announce any limits where journalists could go, and they hadn't made it clear they were making an arrest when they got on the elevator.
“If they tell us to get out, to not cross a certain line, we follow their orders,” Fedorova said. “In this case, it was not clear to anyone that this was a detention at all."
The episode happened just days after a federal agent at the Manhattan immigration court was captured on video shoving an Ecuadorian woman into a wall and onto the floor after her husband was arrested.
Both confrontations took place in a part of the federal building that is open to the public, and is routinely filled with immigrants on their way to and from court hearings, agents waiting to make arrests, activists there to protest the arrests, and journalists documenting the confrontations.
Elected Democrats, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, denounced the agents’ use of force and the Republican administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
“This abuse of law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories must end,” Hochul wrote in a social media post. “What the hell are we doing here?”
State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a candidate for New York City mayor, said: “We cannot accept or normalize what has now become routine violence at 26 Federal Plaza. It has no place in our city.”
