For almost a year, ICE agents have arrested immigrants in courthouse hallways at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, separating families and leaving children in tears, while enforcement operations also reached New York City streets. The period included a shooting in Marble Hill, Manhattan, a hunger strike in New Jersey and the arrest of a sitting mayoral candidate. Advocates said the effects of enforcement were part of the backdrop to Tuesday’s midterm elections.
A Pastor's Ministry Becomes a Courthouse Watch
Rev. Eduardo Fabian Arias, a Lutheran pastor at Saint Peter's Church in Midtown Manhattan, has made accompanying immigrants central to his ministry since he became pastor in 2020, according to Religion News Service. A few days each week he heads to Federal Plaza, where he sits in on immigration hearings, checks whether people have attorneys, serves as a translator, and gathers information whenever someone is detained, the outlet reported. Arias has spent decades advocating for immigrant rights, and he has said he hopes the election results open the door to new discourse on immigration — allowing families to eventually live without fear of ICE raids, deportations, and family separation.
Working alongside him is Peter Melck Kuttel, Saint Peter's detention coordinator, who has worked with immigrants detained at the courthouse since the summer of 2025. Kuttel told Religion News Service that he believed the visible suffering at 26 Federal Plaza and in enforcement operations nationwide influenced the election, and that many people came to see detained immigrants as neighbors, friends or employees rather than strangers. He said that voting to close the border was different from supporting family separation. Kuttel also said he had personally seen very few immigrants with serious criminal records, an observation that differed from border czar Tom Homan's description of the “worst-of-the-worst” individuals ICE was supposedly targeting. Kuttel estimated that courthouse arrests averaged four or five a day over the summer, according to the same report.
Federal Plaza Becomes a Flashpoint
The immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza became a focal point of ICE arrests and family separations starting in the summer of 2025, and amNewYork has covered events there for almost a year. The outlet reported that ICE agents arrested then-mayoral candidate Brad Lander at the building, and that masked agents roughed up journalists covering the scene. On Sept. 30, 2025, several ICE agents grew infuriated with members of the press and grabbed and threw multiple journalists, including an amNewYork reporter, while Anadolu Agency photographer Vural Elibol was injured in the incident, the outlet separately reported.
Journalists eventually gained access to the 26 Federal Plaza immigration court, giving the public a rare window into the arrests happening inside. A Documented investigation into a newer hearing location in the same building found that immigrants there were separated from family members and supporters by staff who the outlet discovered worked for ICE, according to Documented. Separately, a joint legal effort helped secure the release of roughly 26 people from ICE custody, a figure cited by Rep. Goldman and reported by amNY's coverage of a Manhattan courthouse arrest.
What New York’s Courthouse Protections Cover
New York State Attorney General guidance says local law-enforcement agencies ordinarily may not detain someone solely at the request of federal civil immigration authorities without a judicial warrant. In an Oct. 15, 2026 ruling, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York said city officers are not empowered to make arrests pursuant to administrative warrants. The ruling addressed city officers’ authority to make arrests pursuant to administrative warrants.
The state’s courthouse protections have an earlier history: according to the New York State Attorney General, a 2020 ruling barred civil immigration arrests in and around state courthouses, and New York codified that protection through the Protect Our Courts Act that year. That precedent concerned state courthouses, unlike the federal immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza.
A Shooting in Marble Hill
The crackdown's reach extended beyond the courthouse in October, when ICE agents shot and wounded Oscar Belgal, a Dominican native, during a confrontation in Marble Hill. His 5-year-old son was in the car at the time but was not injured, according to ABC7 New York. NYPD commanders said a single ICE agent fired seven shots during the incident, the station reported, though a separate account from The City Reporter, examining NYPD-released video, said it was not entirely clear which agent had fired his weapon.
Belgal was hospitalized after the shooting, and ICE subsequently took him into custody. More than a week later he was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center with a bullet still lodged in his neck, and he remained in ICE custody as of Oct. 23, per ABC7's reporting. A federal judge barred his deportation after immigration advocates filed a petition on his behalf, the station noted.
Delaney Hall and the Wider Crackdown
In June 2026, detainees at Delaney Hall in New Jersey staged a hunger and labor strike that drew national attention and sustained, near-daily crowds of protesters to Newark's Doremus Avenue, according to the New Jersey Monitor. Advocates told the outlet the strike ended because of actions taken by the jail's guards — not because conditions behind bars had improved. ICE operations also expanded well beyond detention facilities and courthouses: agents apprehended Canal Street vendors in Chinatown in October 2025, and in Minneapolis, ICE agents shot and killed two people, part of what advocates describe as enforcement operations that left hundreds of people injured, incarcerated, or both.
The pace of arrests accelerated sharply over that stretch. A New York City Mayor's Office audit found ICE made 5,567 arrests from January 2025 through March 2026, with about half occurring inside an immigration court, per the Religion News Service report. Nationally, the American Immigration Council found that ICE averaged roughly 300 arrests a day in late 2024, nearly two-thirds involving people already held in federal, state, or local jails — but from December 2025 through January 2026, that average jumped to 1,264 arrests per day, more than 300% higher than the year before, according to the American Immigration Council.
Advocates Point to a Voter Rebuke
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said voters across the country and in New York rejected Trump's immigration policies when they voted on Nov. 3. He described arrests at 26 Federal Plaza as extreme unlawfulness that separated families who had followed immigration procedures. Awawdeh called on the new Congress to hold ICE oversight hearings, reclaim enforcement funds for programs that help New Yorkers and provide a pathway to citizenship.
Democrats made gains in the House, Senate, governors' races and state legislative contests nationwide. Immigration was part of the election debate.
Heightened Activity Heading Into Election Day
In the weeks before the election, NPR and its member stations reported a noticeable rise in ICE activity across multiple cities and states, including tips from rural Illinois, Oregon, Detroit and California describing surges in enforcement throughout October. A New York City official confirmed the mayor's office had observed a similar surge in city activity, according to NPR. Separately, Mayor Mamdani said in a statement posted to the city's website that New York City law bars ICE from using city property as a base of operations.
Ahead of the vote, New York advocates had prepared for the possibility that ICE agents might appear at polling locations, even though the Trump administration said it had no plans to deploy immigration officers there, according to Spectrum News. The Department of Homeland Security told the outlet that ICE was not planning operations targeting polling places, though agents could still make an arrest if an active public-safety threat endangered a polling site. Advocates said they planned to deploy thousands of poll observers across the state and expand outreach about whom voters could contact if they believed their voting rights were being obstructed.
