A dozen federal agents in tactical gear arrested several people outside the Row Hotel, a shelter for migrant families, in Midtown Thursday afternoon, sending shockwaves among residents living above.
According to video footage and eyewitness accounts, federal agents from the FBI and other agencies, dressed in flak jackets, swarmed the sidewalk at 44th Street, around the corner from the Row’s main entrance, at around 4 p.m. Thursday – a busy time when many families are coming home for the day.
It’s the first known case of a federal raid near a migrant shelter since Trump took office.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and for ICE, which oversees interagency teams making arrests across New York, didn’t return a request for comment.
The videos showed three people being taken away by federal officers. A source familiar with the incident said that around 10 people were arrested overall.
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said they were reviewing the incident and was not able to confirm if any Row residents were detained in the arrests.
“As the mayor has consistently stated, New York City does not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Garcia said, adding that the NYPD was not involved in any of the arrests.
Immigration enforcement agents detained people near a Midtown migrant shelter, Oct. 16, 2025. Credit: Obtained by THE CITY
The federal agents did not enter the hotel and would have had to show a judicial warrant in order to do so, Garcia said.
While New York City’s “sanctuary city” protections block coordination with federal authorities on civil immigration enforcement, Adams has called for rolling back some of those rules.
He’s also claimed that the corruption case brought against him by the Justice Department, and later dropped by the Trump Justice Department, had been a political punishment for saying President Biden’s immigration policies would “destroy the city.”
One Queens resident who was on the block visiting his wife, who works in the area, witnessed the arrests. He declined to give his name, fearing retaliation.
“Because some people are doing bad things, we’re all paying,” he said in Spanish. “It’s getting out of control.”
While the raid near a migrant shelter is apparently the first since Trump took office, advocates say federal agents have come looking for specific people at various shelters in the past.
As tens of thousands of people arrived from the southern border starting in spring of 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams stood up a rapidly expanding system of ad hoc emergency shelters for “new arrivals,” segregating people who had crossed the border after the spring of that year. The Row in Midtown was the first designated hotel to open up in the fall of 2022 as part of that separate system.
But as the system grew, and Trump won reelection, advocates feared that the widely-known migrant shelters like the Row and the Roosevelt, or any number of tent shelters that have since closed, would become easy targets for the new administration bent on mass deportation.
In June, the New York Times reported that NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry had been attempting to coordinate a large-scale raid with the Trump administration at the Randall’s Island migrant shelter which closed in February. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch learned of the scheme and quashed it.
But thus far, the remaining migrant shelters have evaded large scale immigration enforcement. All of the large-scale tent shelters have closed, leaving four remaining separate migrant shelters, plus another 155 run by the Department of Homeland Services, according to data through July, housing around 35,000 people, down from a peak of 68,000 people in December of 2023.
Widescale street raids by ICE have been more common in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, with ICE focusing enforcement in New York City thus far inside immigration courthouses and at ICE check-in locations.
The news of the arrests outside the Row rattled residents, as word quickly spread on Whatsapp groups of families living at the hotel.
Outside the hotel Thursday evening, Joan, who declined to give his last name, was waiting for his wife to come home from work. He wasn’t at the hotel at the time of the arrests, but was among those who learned from WhatsApp.
“Everyone is worried and anxious,” he said. “You have to shut yourself in and not be in the street.”
Father Fabián Arias, a pastor at Saint Peter’s Church who has been accompanying families to immigration court, was outside the Row Thursday evening distributing food and supplies as the dust settled.
“It’s terrible,” he said in Spanish. “It’s this state of terrorism that we’re living in the streets, in the courts. It’s getting worse and worse.”
The Row is expected to close by the spring.
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