By Ted Hesson
NEW YORK (Reuters) -New York Governor Kathy Hochul criticized federal immigration officers who she said shoved and injured journalists at a New York City courthouse on Tuesday, the latest in a series of violent confrontations as tensions rise over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Hochul shared a video posted to X by a New York Daily News reporter that showed masked men boarding an elevator in a federal building in downtown Manhattan that houses immigration courts. Several of the men, one of whom appeared to be wearing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement badge, pushed photographers near the elevator, sending at least two people crashing to the floor.
“Masked ICE agents shoved and injured journalists today at Federal Plaza. One reporter left on a stretcher,” Hochul said on X. “This abuse of law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories must end. What the hell are we doing here?”
Trump, a Republican, has escalated immigration enforcement in Democratic-led cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as part of his bid to deport record numbers of immigrants without legal status. In recent months, ICE adopted a strategy of arresting migrants appearing in court for their immigration cases, a tactic critics say punishes people trying to follow the law.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said officers were “swarmed by agitators and members of the press” while arresting “an illegal alien from Peru.”
“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,” she said in a statement.
Trump officials have blamed politicians critical of ICE for fueling sentiment against officers, amping up that message following a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility that killed two immigrants and seriously wounded a third.
ICE briefly relieved an officer of his duties on Friday after he was captured on video shoving a woman to the ground in the same New York City courthouse after she pleaded for her husband’s release. CBS News reported on Monday the officer had been returned to duty. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hochul, a Democrat, criticized the Trump administration and DHS earlier in the day over $187 million in cuts to counterterrorism funding for New York.
Zohran Mamdani, the leading Democratic candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, criticized the violent acts allegedly perpetrated by ICE officers at the courthouse, located at 26 Federal Plaza.
“We cannot accept or normalize what has now become routine violence at 26 Federal Plaza,” he said.
In the incident on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said a journalist from amNewYork, a local news outlet, followed ICE officers into an elevator after a woman was detained.
After one officer yelled for the journalist to be removed, other officers pushed a videographer and another reporter to the ground, the Reuters witness said.
The videographer hit his head and was taken out of the building on a stretcher, the witness said.
amNewYork identified photojournalist Dean Moses as one of the reporters pushed by officers.
L. Vural Elibol, a videographer with the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, said in an interview he was trying to film ICE officers taking a migrant into custody when he was pushed down by an officer.
“I was trying to get the video and someone yanked me and threw me to the ground,” he said.
Elibol said he hurt his back and head. He was removed on a stretcher and taken to the hospital, where he was examined and discharged with pain medicine, he said.
(Reporting by David Dee Delgado in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese)
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