Families split up as several immigrants arrested at ICE check-in center in Manhattan

Immigrants appearing on short notice for required check-ins with a private contractor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are being detained after their meetings in Lower Manhattan, sometimes as sobbing family members look on.

Gothamist observed at least 14 people, including 10 men and four women, being escorted by masked plainclothes officers after appearing for check-ins Wednesday at the 7 Elk St. office. They were whisked away in cars marked as federal law enforcement vehicles.

The cars then entered the garage underneath another nearby federal building, at 26 Federal Plaza. At least one of the officers wore an ICE badge.

At least 16 people were detained at the Elk Street office on Tuesday, according to local news outlet The City, which first reported the arrests.

The office is run by the private contractor BI Inc., a subsidiary of private prison contractor Geo Group, which also runs the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, The City reported.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement on Friday that those arrested had final removal orders issued by an immigration judge and had failed to comply.

The arrests represent a new tactic in ICE’s immigration crackdown under the Trump administration, as the agency seeks to ramp up immigrant detentions and arrests, partly by deploying ICE agents in locations that were previously off limits or rarely visited.

ICE personnel in recent weeks have patrolled the halls of immigration courthouses — where ICE sightings were rare — in New York City and across the country, arresting individuals leaving court hearings.

The Elk Street office coordinates an ICE alternative-to-detention program — called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program — wherein immigrants appear for regularly scheduled check-ins, rather than face imprisonment in an ICE detention center, according to local immigration lawyers and advocates.

“What’s alarming about their (ICE officers) coming here and going to immigration courts is that they’re picking up people who are complying with their appointments,” Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and a lawyer for one of the men who was detained, Jean Mawer Enciso Guzman.

Guzman’s wife, Ambar Mujica Rodriguez, sobbed and shouted as her husband was escorted into a car by masked men. She said, "I can't. Please don't go."

The couple's 12-year-old daughter tried to intervene, but Cargioli urged her to stop.

Families exiting the office said they had received an unusual message on Tuesday morning via BI’s phone app requesting they appear the same day or the next at the Elk Street office, along with a phone call instructing them to bring their children.

The families said they usually received several days' or weeks' notice before having to appear at the office – and had never been asked to bring their children.

The intensification of the immigration crackdown comes as ICE officers’ quotas for daily arrests surge from 1,000 to 3,000, according to NPR.

Moises Mazadiaga, 32, from Honduras, said he arrived at the Elk Street office with his 10-year-old daughter around 9 a.m., after receiving a message and phone call that morning to appear with his child.

Mazadiaga said he received the message as he was drinking his morning coffee, and he immediately worried that he and his daughter would be deported.

After leaving his appointment, Mazadiaga told Gothamist the staff inside notified him that he had a final order of removal issued against him, and advised him to get a lawyer. Another immigrant at Elk Street said she was asked to produce her immigration paperwork and was allowed to leave.

This story was updated with comment from DHS.