A federal agent grabbed and shoved journalists in a hallway outside of a New York City immigration court on Tuesday, sending one to the hospital in the latest clash between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents enforcing U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Dean Moses, an amNewYork video journalist, documented two women getting into an elevator while being followed by masked ICE agents. While Moses was capturing the footage, one of the agents cursed at him and shoved him out of the elevator, back towards the group of journalists and camera crews behind him.
“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.”
Federal agents push photojournalist Dean Moses while making a detention in immigration court on Sept. 30, 2025 in New York.
AP Photo/Olga Fedorova
Video taken by photographer Stephanie Keith shows that during the struggle, another agent shoved a second journalist, Olga Fedorova, who fell backwards into a third journalist, L. Vural Elibol, seen on the floor in the video.
“I just knew that I had to try to get photos of whatever is happening,” Fedorova told The New York Times. “It was incredibly quick.”
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Fedorova said that she felt herself flying backward and falling before she got up quickly to take more photos as the elevator doors closed. She said Elibol was already on the floor when she hit the ground and he appeared to be injured.
“His camera was next to him — it was still on,” she said. “He was covering his face and he was moaning in pain and he was unable to move.”
Video showed paramedics placing a neck brace on Elibol, and removed him from the building on a stretcher. Elibol, who works with Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi, was taken to a hospital where he was evaluated on Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reports. His current condition is unclear.
Medics transfer journalist L. Vural Elibol to a gurney after he was shoved by federal agents in immigration court on Sept. 30, 2025, in New York.
AP Photo/Olga Fedorova
Fedorova said photographers had worked in the hallway outside immigration court for months without incident. The agents making arrests Tuesday 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, Fedorova added.
“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.”
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 to The Associated Press. “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.”
N.Y. Gov. Kathy Hochul accused the ICE agents of abusing “law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories.”
“What the hell are we doing here?” she wrote on X.
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.”
The scene involving ICE agents comes less than a week after another officer was captured on video at the Manhattan immigration court shoving an Ecuadorian woman into a wall and onto the floor after her husband was arrested.
Footage shows the woman approach the immigration officer following her husband’s arrest, pleading with the officer in Spanish and at one point saying “You don’t care about anything,” before he pushes her into a wall and then onto the floor of a crowded hallway.
“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “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.”
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.
— With files from The Associated Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
