Tears and Panic Outside Immigration Office as ICE Accelerates Round-Ups

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Outside a nondescript office building on Elk Street in Lower Manhattan, scenes of pain and anguish unfolded on the pavement throughout Wednesday as immigrants and their family members waited to see if their loved ones would return from what had been billed as routine procedures.

The basement office hosts ICE check-ins, run by private subcontractor the Geo Group. Immigrants in various stages of deportation proceedings are required to show up there as their cases wind through the immigration process.

But with the Trump administration demanding agents to dramatically ramp up arrests, immigrants in New York City received urgent messages and phone calls from ICE telling them to come into the office either Tuesday or Wednesday.

That included mothers who showed up Tuesday and were told to return Wednesday with their children. 

The City witnessed 16 people taken out of the office in handcuffs Tuesday afternoon.

The arrests continued Wednesday with at least 15 more people taken into custody. Two mothers and their young children were escorted on foot by agents across the street to 26 Federal Plaza, though it’s unclear if they were detained. 

Here’s what The City observed over the course of the day: 

9:32 a.m.: Two SUVs are again parked out front of the Elk Street office, a day after the same type of vehicles were used to bring prisoners across the street to the basement garage of 26 Federal Plaza. Meanwhile, several people wait outside for loved ones who had headed into the basement office earlier in the morning.

9:45 a.m.: A woman and a girl who appears to be a young teen are escorted by two agents across the street on foot from Elk Street to Federal Plaza. It’s not clear if they’re being detained. 

Another woman comes out of the ICE check-in office and hugs a friend who has been waiting for her outside. The two start crying. 

As they walk away, they hold hands with a third man who says he’s waiting for his friend still inside. 

The three hold hands in prayer. “Praying to God that your friend comes out,” the woman says before the other two walk off. 

The man, Colin Campbell, 55, says he’s a U.S. citizen who is accompanying his friend, a home health aid from Guyana, to her check in. “I’m feeling so sad. She’s in there. I don’t know what will happen. I’m just praying; I’m asking God to deliver her,” he says. 

10:27 a.m.: The first three clear arrests of the morning. 

A woman and two men in handcuffs are escorted into the parked SUVs by masked agents in plainclothes. “Those are the bad people, right?” Campbell asks, turning to me.

10:38 a.m.: Leaning against a wall across the street is 35-year-old Veronica, who’s waiting for her friend inside with her young son. 

“She never asked me to accompany her because nothing had ever happened before,” she says in Spanish. 

But Veronica’s friend got an urgent phone call to show up in the office and got nervous, and didn’t want to come in at all today. Veronica had tried to console her: “Let’s do the things correctly. You haven’t done anything wrong.” 

10:50 a.m.: A second woman and young child, this one around 4 or 5, are walked by agents across the street to 26 Federal Plaza. It’s still not clear if the two are being detained. 

Two women waiting outside exchange words in English. “My husband is in there,” an Uzbeki woman says. “My friend is in there,” an Ecuadorean woman replies. 

11 a.m.: A Turkish woman and her two kids emerge from the office, scampering across the street to hug her husband, who has been waiting outside. 

The four embrace in a group hug. “I’m feeling good,” the father says before they walk off together. 

11:15 a.m.: 50-year-old Hubert Mendonca, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from Guayana more than two decades ago, is waiting for his wife and baby, who are inside the basement office. 

“It’s not resting good in my stomach,” he says after watching several people hauled off in handcuffs. 

“Our governmental president should have helped us by getting rid of the bad people, and the good ones … give them a second chance,” he told The City.

11:30 a.m.: A couple embrace at the office entrance.

Jaen, from Colombia, has an appointment and heads inside, while his wife, Ambar, and their 12-year-old daughter, Aranza, wait outside. 

11:45 a.m.: Attorney Dave Wilkins is pacing around outside the building. Earlier, he accompanied a client into the basement office but was soon kicked out by a site supervisor. 

“I haven’t been able to figure out physically where my client is or what they plan to do with my client,” he says, adding that he hadn’t heard from her in about two hours. 

11:48 a.m.: Two more men are taken out in handcuffs and put into SUVs that drive off.

11:59 a.m.: Mendonca’s wife comes out and the two hug. He grabs their 3-month-old, cooing at her and calling her a princess. 

“I brought the father of the child so if something happens to me she gets to stay, she was born here,” his 28-year-old wife, Katy, says in Spanish, who declines to give her last name because of her ongoing immigration case. 

“My heart has returned to its place for now. It’s hard, but we’ll see what happens,” he said. “But this is horrible.”

12:11 p.m.: A Venezuelan woman named Rosmely says she has been waiting outside all morning for her daughter-in-law. 

“This makes me so nervous,” she says in Spanish. “This is so strange to me.” She said she hadn’t heard from her daughter-in-law in around 40 minutes. “She hasn’t called me again, and here I am outside.”

12:57 p.m.: Ambar, 30, and her daughter have been waiting for about two hours. She’s getting nervous. 

“You feel so powerless,” she says in Spanish. “If you ask me, this is a fair country, but we have really suffered,” Ambar says. 

She’s from Venezuela. The two crossed the border exactly two years ago, on June 4, 2023. 

They were separated at the border and he spent several weeks before ICE released him. Their tearful reunion in the Los Angeles airport after ICE custody was documented by ABC at the time. They each applied for asylum, and their cases are still pending. 

1:25 p.m.: One masked agent appears to be leaving for lunch. An activist stalks after him down the block, yelling and calling him a Nazi. 

1:47 p.m.: Four women in handcuffs are marched out of the office by masked agents. Rosmely breaks down in tears. 

Her daughter-in-law is being taken away. 

Colin also starts sobbing. His friend, the home health aid, is also handcuffed. He bends over and then staggers off gasping for breath. 

Around the corner, Rosmely collapses onto a curb, “This is horrible here,” she says in Spanish, “How can I tell my son?” “That girl is so tranquil. She has no criminal record; she barely goes out.” 

Rosmely says she has a court date in the coming weeks, but she’s planning to skip it after what happened. “No one should come here,” she says. 

2:30 p.m.: Veronica’s friend and her young child come out.

The three embrace in the roadway and walk off together. 

2:41 p.m.: Four men are walked out in handcuffs by masked agents. One is Jaen, Ambar’s husband. Her 12-year-old daughter screams and runs after him. 

Ambar wails in agony and collapses onto the sidewalk. 

As the SUVs pull away, Ambar leans over a nearby fence sobbing, “My love, my love,” she murmurs over and over again.

Her lawyer attempts to console her, while her daughter is stone-faced, staring straight ahead. 

2:55 p.m.: The family’s lawyer, Margaret Cargioli, speaks to reporters after having spent several hours inside the basement office. 

“Possibly, they were looking for people with final orders of removal, or people who were approaching the two-year mark to put them in expedited removal,” she says, reiterating what Ambar had told THE CITY earlier, that the family crossed exactly two years ago today. 

“Jaen, he came to every single ICE appointment, he was very cooperative with all the demands that were made of him. It’s a real shame they are separating families,” she says. 

4:04 p.m.: Two more men are brought out in handcuffs and put into an SUV and driven off. 

4:35 p.m.: Several masked agents leave the building, load into SUVs and drive off, seemingly finished for the day.