NEW YORK CITY \u2014 The woman on the court\u2019s TV monitor was scared.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you come in person,\u201d asked Judge Evalyn Douchy, who also appeared on a video link.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just afraid with whatever is going on in immigration court,\u201d the woman said.<\/p>\n
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A few steps outside the small courtroom on the 14th floor of the towering federal building in lower Manhattan, four immigration officers stood waiting to see if they would arrest anyone that day. They were dressed not in traditional law enforcement uniforms but in cargo pants, jeans, T-shirts, baseball caps. Some wore black tactical vests emblazoned with \u201cPOLICE.\u201d Some had on sunglasses. All carried sidearms and had neck gaiters pulled over their faces.<\/p>\n
There were no arrests in the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza that day in early October. But the week prior, video circulated online of agents pushing a mother<\/a> to the floor and shoving journalists<\/a>, sending one to the hospital; one of the agents was suspended for three days. For months, federal immigration agents had been waiting outside the courtrooms<\/a> to arrest immigrants as they came and went from routine hearings.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very sympathetic to that, that you\u2019re afraid,\u201d Douchy told the woman before proceeding with her hearing. \u201cBut in the future, if the court denies an order, you need to come in.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Just under 120 miles separate the federal immigration courts in Hartford and lower Manhattan, but they show very different sides of a system that decides whether millions of immigrants who are in the United States without legal authorization can stay here or have to go.<\/p>\n A reporter and illustrator with CT Insider spent a week<\/a> observing hearings at Connecticut\u2019s only immigration court. Over the course of that week, they never saw agents with U.S. Immigration or Customs Enforcement on the same floor as the immigration court, even though ICE\u2019s Hartford office is located just one floor below in the downtown Hartford federal building.<\/p>\n During just one day at the New York City court, however, they saw at least a dozen officers with ICE and other federal agencies waiting in the hallways and lingering outside courtrooms. Families with young children often walked a gauntlet of masked, armed agents \u2014 and the news photographers who followed them \u2014 to get to and from their immigration hearings.<\/p>\n In the middle are immigrants who have their cases transferred to Federal Plaza after they move from Connecticut to New York. They go from a court where ICE is all but absent and arrests are rare to one where agents walk the halls on a daily basis and arrests are much more common.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In a statement to CT Insider, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Federal Plaza \u201chas been the target of multiple threats including assaults on law enforcement by sanctuary politicians and activists, a bomb threat and a threatening letter with a white suspicious powder.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAgain, we are urging the media and politicians to stop fanning the flames of division and stop demonization of law enforcement,\u201d DHS said.<\/p>\n From Hartford to New York City<\/p>\n The man on the TV monitor in Judge Ted Doolittle\u2019s courtroom in Hartford in August had left Connecticut after a falling out with his partner, the mother of his children. Now, he was living at a shelter in Brooklyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cVivo solo,\u201d he said in Spanish. \u201cI live alone.\u201d<\/p>\n After severing the man\u2019s case from that of his partner, Doolittle asked if he wanted his case transferred from Hartford to a closer immigration court.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, that would be better,\u201d the man responded, speaking through an interpreter. An attorney for the government, who was also present in court via a video link, didn\u2019t object. And with that, it was done.<\/p>\n The immigration court at Federal Plaza in Manhattan would contact the man with his next court date, Doolittle said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThank you so much,\u201d the man said, placing his hand over his heart, before Doolittle disconnected him from the court\u2019s video link.<\/p>\n The courtroom was one of four off a small lobby that comprised the Hartford Immigration Court. For a government office that hosts serious proceedings, there are welcoming elements \u2014 especially for the children who often visit court with their parents. Picturebooks are stacked in front of a window for filing paperwork. A rubber ducky left by a child sits atop the lobby\u2019s fire alarm. Some courtrooms include coloring books and crayons.<\/p>\n CT Insider never saw ICE agents in Hartford Immigration Court over the course of a week observing hearings there in August or during other visits before and since. Doolittle said he only knew of two arrests by ICE at the court while he was an immigration judge there from fall 2023 to this September.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t see it,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, I can\u2019t speak for what was happening on any other floors (of the federal building in downtown Hartford).\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n A couple waits for their hearing in the lobby of Connecticut’s only immigration court, located inside the Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building, in downtown Hartford.<\/p>\n Illustration by Matt Stevens<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees immigration courts, let Doolittle go<\/a> in September, the month after that hearing with the man whose case was transferred to New York City, along with about 20 other<\/a> immigration judges.<\/p>\n There was one high-profile arrest by ICE in Hartford Immigration Court in May \u2014 former Yale student Saifullah J. Khan, who told CT Insider<\/a> earlier this year that agents used a stun gun on him after he ran from the elevators, where they first approached him, back to the doorway of Doolittle\u2019s courtroom.<\/p>\n After he left the court in September, Doolittle gave CT Insider his own account of Khan\u2019s arrest. It was late in the day, Doolittle said. As he heard the commotion at the closed door of his courtroom, he went out into the lobby through a back exit to see what was happening, still dressed in his judge\u2019s robe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very, very disturbing,\u201d Doolittle said. \u201cIt\u2019s the most crazy, upsetting thing I\u2019ve ever been around.\u201d<\/p>\n As the agents took Khan away, Doolittle recalled telling them they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they arrested him in the court. That reaction underscored how rare it was for ICE to arrest someone in Hartford Immigration Court, and how out of keeping it was with the court\u2019s character.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the lobby where the staff, at their own expense, stock it with drawing books and crayons,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a safe place to be having a takedown. So I was mad.\u201d<\/p>\n In a new statement to CT Insider, DHS said the officers who arrested Khan \u201ctook appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that ensures the success of the operation and prioritizes the safety of the public and our officers.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Yale expelled Khan in 2019<\/a> after two allegations of sexual assault \u2014 one by a fellow student and one by a man in Washington, D.C. A Connecticut court acquitted Khan of the student’s allegations in 2018, and Khan’s attorney at the time, Norm Pattis, said he had a letter from a D.C. police detective saying that case was closed; no charges have been filed in that case. Khan denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n In arguing for Khan\u2019s detention an attorney for ICE’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told a judge Khan was a \u201cdanger to the community,\u201d the subject of an order of protection in Washington state and that the government could not confirm he was acquitted of the Connecticut assault charges, according to the Hartford Courant<\/a>.<\/p>\n ICE released Khan from custody<\/a> on a Massachusetts immigration judge\u2019s orders in May.<\/p>\n Returning to the man whose case Doolittle transferred from Hartford to Federal Plaza back in August, CT Insider couldn\u2019t determine when he had his first hearing in Manhattan or how he has fared since. Immigration courts fall under the U.S. Department of Justice, not the Judicial Branch, so court records aren\u2019t open to the public as they would be in most civil and criminal cases.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n There\u2019s also no hard data on how many cases have been transferred from Hartford to Federal Plaza in Manhattan \u2014 though CT Insider saw several such transfers in one week.<\/p>\n CT Insider is not naming individuals who appeared in court because their identities could not be verified. Although names were posted in court lobbies, they often appeared before judges in a different order, and court officials declined to confirm who appeared when. Court staff usually referred to cases among themselves by the last three digits of their Alien Registration Number, or A-Number \u2014 a unique identifier assigned to them by U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services. When names were spoken in court it was not always clear. Respondents approached by CT Insider declined to comment.<\/p>\n Amid all the opaqueness of immigration court one thing is clear: The man was going to a court where arrests by ICE and other federal agents are anything but rare.<\/p>\n Inside the Manhattan court<\/p>\n By 10 a.m. on a Wednesday in early October, photographers and videographers with City of New York press passes slung around their necks were walking the hallways at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan trying to suss out where the action would be, if there was any that day.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For a while, the journalists bounced between federal agents who stood together in small groups spread out between the 12th and 14th floors, where the New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court has its offices. The trick, one veteran photographer said, was to pick a spot and stay there \u2014 move around too much and you might miss something.<\/p>\n Unlike Hartford, Federal Plaza is a warren of various waiting rooms and courtrooms \u2014 some large, some tiny \u2014 spread across the 12th and 14th floors.<\/p>\n Only members of the media were allowed to linger in the hallways. Security told a volunteer who was there to observe the court on behalf of an immigrant rights group to leave the hallway.<\/p>\n Regulations set down by the Executive Office for Immigration Review \u2014 a division of the U.S. Department of Justice that oversees the courts \u2014 state that hearings \u201cshall be open to the public\u201d outside of narrow exceptions<\/a>. Agency policies also allow sketch artists<\/a> with proper advance notice.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n However, security guards told the CT Insider reporter and illustrator that they would have to request access to hearings from the judges presiding over them \u2014 even for preliminary group hearings that were open by default in Hartford.<\/p>\n EOIR did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n Outside Douchy\u2019s courtroom, her assistant said the CT Insider reporter could come in to observe the master calendar hearing, as such group hearings are called. However, the illustrator couldn\u2019t. Court security guards also asked the illustrator to leave one of several waiting rooms in the court complex. Later, outside a separate courtroom, an assistant for Immigration Judge Frederic G. Leeds let both the reporter and the illustrator in to observe a hearing.<\/p>\n Later, a dozen or so photographers had settled on the 12th floor, lining one of the hallways and spilling into the elevator lobby. On either side of the press were two small groups of officers from various federal agencies \u2014 at least one wore a baseball cap that bore the logo of the U.S. Treasury Police \u2014 who\u2019d been detailed to ICE.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Like the agents outside the courtroom on the 14th floor, none of the agents here wore uniforms. Instead, they wore jeans or cargo pants, T-shirts or polos and casual jackets. Most had on baseball caps. All but one hid their faces, and the one who didn\u2019t was wearing sunglasses. Several wore badges clipped to their belts or hanging from ball-chain necklaces.<\/p>\n Mostly, the photographers talked to the other photographers and the agents talked to the other agents as both groups waited for something to happen. Meanwhile, business carried on around them.<\/p>\n A family leaving a court hearing walked through the rows of federal agents and photographers to get to the elevators \u2014 the toddler holding onto their mom\u2019s arm as she pushed a stroller with a baby in it.<\/p>\n A man showed a security guard a paper and asked him a question in Spanish, appearing as if he was asking for directions. As they spoke, a masked federal agent came up behind the man to look at the paper over his shoulder. Moments later, a different masked federal agent did the same.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n CT Insider did not witness any arrests on the day in early October at Federal Plaza. But for weeks, those hallways had been the scenes of regular arrests<\/a> by federal agents \u2014 immigrants taken into custody as they came or went from routine immigration hearings.<\/p>\n At least some of those arrests, captured on camera, appeared to be dramatic and, at times, violent. One video showed agents grappling<\/a> with New York City comptroller and then-mayoral candidate Brad Lander, after he refused to let go of a man they were arresting until the agents showed him a judicial warrant. (ICE often makes arrests under administrative warrants, which do not require a determination of probable cause by a judge.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Another video<\/a> from late September showed several agents pulling Ruben Abelardo Ortiz-Lopez away from his wife and daughter as they tried to arrest him. \u201cSuelta la ni\u00f1a,\u201d one agent can be heard saying in Spanish \u2014 \u201cLet go of the girl.\u201d Agents then pulled the man down a hallway and into a stairwell, where they covered the window with papers as journalists tried to document the arrest.<\/p>\n Moments later, in videos that went viral<\/a>, an ICE agent pushed the man\u2019s wife, Monica Moreta-Galarza, against a wall then wrestled her to the floor after she begged officers not to detain her husband, according to ProPublica and The New York Times. A DHS spokesperson called the officer\u2019s behavior<\/a> \u201cunacceptable,\u201d and he was briefly relieved of his duties. However, he was back in Federal Plaza<\/a> three days later, ProPublica reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, later said Ortiz-Lopez was a violent criminal, telling the BBC<\/a>, \u201cIf you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will never return.” Ortiz-Lopez was released from immigration detention<\/a> last month after lawyers filed a petition in federal district court.<\/p>\n In a filing in U.S. district court challenging Ortiz-Lopez\u2019s detention, his attorneys said he was arrested in June 2024 but the charges were dismissed \u201cshortly thereafter.\u201d The attorneys\u00a0 did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Another dramatic video that went viral<\/a> in late September showed federal agents shoving photojournalists as they walked toward a public elevator where an arrest was occurring to document it. L. Vural Elibol, a journalist with the Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi, had to be carried out on a stretcher afterward.<\/p>\n In a statement to CT Insider, DHS said officers involved in that incident \u201crepeatedly told the crowd of agitators and journalists to get back, move and get out of the elevator.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cRioters and sanctuary politicians who encourage individuals to interfere with arrests are actively creating hostile environments that put officers, detainees and the public in harm\u2019s way,\u201d DHS said.<\/p>\n The pace of arrests at Federal Plaza appeared to have slowed by the time CT Insider visited, days into a federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n