A Snapshot Into Darkness: Bearing Witness Inside 26 Federal Plaza
One year ago, Michael Nigro happened upon masked agents detaining immigrants in a Manhattan courthouse. From January 6th to the war in Ukraine, this has become the hardest story of his career.
A small crowd congregates on the ground floor of the Jacob K. Javits building in New York City–also known as 26 Federal Plaza–following the conclusion of a naturalization ceremony that welcomes a new group of United States citizens.
Many stand proudly underneath a portrait of President Donald Trump with their naturalization certificates in-hand. Family and loved ones snap photos to celebrate and commemorate the moment. Smiles stretch across their faces in contrast with President Trump’s stern, glaring pose framed above them. Their cheers and laughter fill the hall with a joyous air.
A few floors up, rows of masked agents wait ominously outside of a courtroom door. The air in these halls is heavy and foreboding.
A family who showed up to a routine court hearing with the same hope of one day celebrating U.S. citizenship steps out of the courtroom.
Without hesitation, a group of masked agents swarm the father and surround him on all sides.
He looks up at the agents with confusion and fear as they grab him firmly. His daughters latch onto him and begin to cry out, “Por favor, no! Papi!”
Another agent steps in and rips the daughters’ hands off their father’s sweater. The masked agents pull him in the opposite direction. His wife and younger son begin weeping alongside his daughters, looking back over their shoulders as their father disappears into a sea of men.
A collection of photojournalists, including independent journalist Michael Nigro, frantically position and reposition themselves within the crammed hallway to document this chaotic and traumatic scene, acutely aware of their limited window of time to do so.
The father is shoved into a stairwell where no one—not his family, the press, or even lawyers—is allowed. They do not know where he was taken or for what reason. All they know is that he is gone and their family is torn apart.
Photojournalists wait by the stairwell doors. Its small glass window is covered to eliminate visibility. They use their ears rather than their eyes to document what they can. Sometimes they hear the clicks of handcuffs. Sometimes yells and expletives from the agents. Sometimes the screams and cries of detained immigrants. Sometimes nothing.
As their heart rates slowly return to a normal pace, the photojournalists reposition themselves throughout the fluorescent-lit halls in preparation for another scene to unfold.
Harrowing moments like this have become disturbingly familiar for Nigro and other photojournalists since the start of President Trump’s second term and his administration’s mass deportation campaign that has swept up legal immigrants and U.S. citizens alike while simultaneously taking unprecedented action to roll back legal immigration pathways.
Though now notorious, the federal immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway were once completely shrouded in darkness. Photojournalists have helped to shine a light into these buildings’ halls, but much of what happens outside of their limited field of view remains largely a black hole.
Nigro was among the first journalists who, through happenstance, uncovered the operations taking place at 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway. At the time, he had no idea that a few obscure frames would break a story that would draw the critical attention of local, national and international media and policymakers to the Trump administration’s immigration operations.
Watch the full interview:
On May 29, 2025, Nigro was documenting protestors gathered in Foley Square in support of Columbia University student Yunseo Chung—a legal permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. since she was 7—who had a hearing on her deportation case. Chung was one of three legal permanent residents (the others being Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi) targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through a personal directive from Secretary of State Marco Rubio after participating in a pro-Palestinian protest at Barnard College, the women’s affiliate of Columbia University.
After the protests ended, Nigro left Foley Square and began walking alone down Duane Street which sits between 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway, also known as the Ted Weiss Federal Building.
While walking, Nigro looked from afar into the dirtied glass exterior of the lobby of the Ted Weiss building where he saw a congregation of masked men–a few of them dressed in tactical gear.
Perplexed by this bizarre sight, he raised his camera to capture a few shots. A man then approached him as he was taking his photos, telling him that masked agents were snatching immigrants from immigration courts inside the building.
The man was a federal employee with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who worked inside the building, sharing that he had videos of these men roughing up and tackling immigrants who were showing up for routine court appearances. Later reporting revealed that some EPA employees “had been pushed out of the way in elevators and had felt threatened coming to and from work since the ICE agents started appearing in the lobby of the building,” with many expressing deep concern both for the immigrants and their fellow employees.
Nigro was speechless. At the time, he was not aware of the immigration courts housed inside these federal buildings. Moreover, he couldn’t understand why–or more critically, how–ICE agents were detaining immigrants who were following the law and doing things “the right way.” These were not individuals who committed violent, heinous crimes or those who were evading legal processes. These were individuals abiding by the legal systems laid out before them who had legal protected status to live in the United States.
A small group of journalists who had also attended the protest in Foley Square approached Nigro and the EPA employee, curious about what was unfolding. Nigro explained the situation and said that they needed to get inside the building to document what was happening. The other journalists agreed without hesitation, knowing that whatever was happening was clearly intended to be an inconspicuous operation.
Journalists are legally allowed access to both 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway since they are considered public federal property. Nigro and the other journalists, however, were repeatedly denied entry by building security and masked agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Nigro decided to call his attorney, Wylie Stecklow–a veteran civil rights attorney–who coincidentally happened to be just a short walk away at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Upon arrival, Stecklow demanded to speak to the building’s management, to which the agents eventually agreed. However, as with the agents, the building manager insisted that journalists were not allowed inside.
At this point, he and Nigro walked the manager downstairs to show him an official plaque outlining the Federal Rules and Regulations for Conduct on Federal Property which plainly detailed the right for media to access public areas of the building. The manager was baffled, completely unaware of his own building’s rules and regulations.
The manager suggested that Stecklow send an email and submit a formal complaint online. Stecklow refused, stating that if they are forced to leave, every individual journalist will file First Amendment violation claims.
Nigro and other photojournalists have had access to the building ever since.
“I’ve been practicing [as an attorney] for over 30 years, and this might be the biggest impact I have on anything, and it was a few minutes of my life,” Stecklow said.
Despite their eventual success, photojournalists endured weeks of ongoing resistance as they got closer to the immigration courts upstairs.
Agents at first forced the photojournalists to stand by the elevator banks, obstructing their entry and line of sight into the hallways where the courts resided. Only through persistent opposition did the photojournalists eventually gain access to the halls.
They balanced a delicate and disheartening line. They knew they had full rights to document inside the building. But they also knew that respecting oftentimes questionable boundaries and barriers to access was critical to maintaining any access at all.
“We should have access to the elevators, we should have access to the staircases, but that’s something we just can’t push,” Nigro explained. “We shouldn’t push, because I think they’d kick us out at that point.”
What journalists eventually discovered was that 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway were part of a larger national strategy implemented by the Trump administration to lay traps by stationing federal agents at immigration courts. This strategy aimed to help meet steep daily arrest quotas, spearheaded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller.
More critically, what was not known at the time was that these federal buildings in lower Manhattan would be the only immigration courts in the entire country that have allowed continuous access, creating a window into what is otherwise obstructed operations. This is in large part because the buildings are distinct from other immigration courts due to the courts being housed alongside other federal offices.
Many of the agents initially occupying these courts were not from ICE or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but from other federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Though many refused to identify themselves, many were not masked and were not clothed in tactical gear.
Nigro said that many of these agents expressed visible and verbal disdain at being pulled away from the jobs they signed up for. “One FBI agent said out loud, ‘A year ago, I was solving murders. Now I’m stuck doing this shit,’” he recalled. “You could just see it in their behavior.”
Court reporters and clerks detailed that many of these agents were extremely aggressive with both the immigrants and court staff prior to the arrival of journalists. Though the violence and aggression did not completely stop, the presence of the press helped to reduce its intensity and regularity.
But as the composition of the agents, the nature of their tactics and directives from the Trump administration mutated, so too did the corridors of 26 Federal Plaza.
To further accelerate their mass deportation agenda, the Trump administration lowered hiring and training standards for ICE agents. Unmasked federal agents were gradually replaced by masked agents in tactical gear. The momentary quell of violence dissipated as agents became increasingly more aggressive, both with immigrants and the press.
“They would come up to us and take pictures of our faces, take pictures of our press badge. And the next day, they’d walk up to us and go, ‘Oh, hey, Michael, you were in Ukraine, right?’ Which is a little disconcerting with a masked man coming up to me, or to any of us,” Nigro said. These new agents were far more aggressive than those prior and seemed to relish the opportunity to be there, according to Nigro.
The increase in violence and aggression mirrored trends seen across the U.S. in cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis where agents were documented using “less-lethal” force and other banned tactics in ways that violate both federal and local use-of-force policies.
Though the photojournalists continued to have a critical role in ensuring accountability, the agents–now masked and unidentifiable–often welcomed photographs as part of a larger propaganda machine to lure recruits and rile up those in the Trump administration’s base supportive of this violence and intimidation.
The agents’ behavior was only further emboldened by the Trump administration’s dismantling of oversight guardrails, essentially enabling agents to act with impunity.
One ICE officer was filmed pressing towards a woman before abruptly grabbing her, pulling her hair, and throwing her to the ground. The woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza, was pleading with the officer, in shock after her husband was detained in front of her children despite being granted an extension on their asylum from Ecuador.
The officer was placed on administrative leave, but was reinstated days later without any explanation from DHS.
The disregard for due process and the rule of law as witnessed in the case of Monica Moreta-Galarza’s husband remains commonplace inside the halls.
“Almost always, the judge said, ‘it’s a continuance, you have a case for asylum and I’ll see you in a year,’ or, ‘I’ll see you in six months,’ or, ‘I’ll see you in 2027,’” he said. “We heard [the agents] call them their ‘target.’ They would grab them and disappear them. It was shocking to watch. We asked to see a warrant, and to this day … I’ve never seen a warrant.”
The “targets” also oftentimes included not only immigrants who entered and exited the courtrooms, but any Black or brown person who entered the building more broadly. Nigro recalled agents surrounding and grabbing a Black man who walked into the building one morning, demanding he show them his ID. The man was a federal employee who worked for the EPA for more than 13 years.
“They have these rolls of paper which are not warrants, but it’s a kind of cheat sheet of who they’re looking for, and if somebody looks like somebody, they’re going to grab them,” he said.
Nigro detailed a particularly shocking incident involving a 22-year-old man who did not speak any English. When leaving the courtroom, the man saw that masked agents were waiting outside the courtroom doors to detain him. Visibly terrified, he decided to turn around and ran back inside to avoid them. ICE agents and photographers are not allowed inside the courtrooms, but in this instance, the agents chased him–the photographers made the quick call to follow them, too.
Agents chased the man around the room before finally grabbing him and flipping him over a bench. Nigro noted with fear in his voice that one agent was mere moments away from unholstering his gun inside the courtroom. Once agents detained the man, they corralled him through the hallway and into the closed-off stairwell. All that could be heard was the man’s screams and cry for help.
Much is still unknown about what happens to individuals once they are detained and moved to closed-off parts of the building. But the persistence of photojournalists and other journalists has helped to reveal some critical information.
It would be discovered that many immigrants are detained on the building’s 10th floor in what is intended to be a temporary holding area where individuals are held for a few hours before being transferred to larger, more permanent and resourced detention centers. However, further investigation revealed that many immigrants were being held for days or even more than a week in some instances.
Rooms meant to hold a dozen people became filled with more than a hundred people, including children, who are reportedly denied access to medical care, legal aid, and phone calls to family and loved ones. Many reported only receiving one to two meals a day, being forced to sleep upright due to the cramped conditions, and being unable to bathe or change clothes.
Beginning in August and extended in September, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to improve what the judge described as “unconstitutional and inhumane treatment” at 26 Federal Plaza. At a federal hearing in February, the Trump administration revealed that, in addition to the building’s 10th floor, they had been detaining individuals on a separate, secret floor where they decided that prior ruling didn’t apply.
Many of these individuals have been shipped across the country to detention facilities or deported to countries where they have no ties while simultaneously being denied legal representation or access to communication with a lawyer, their family, or anyone else during that process. Some individuals detained and deported have included pregnant and postpartum women–one attorney documented by Nigro shared that her client’s wife suffered a miscarriage after witnessing his detention.
As of early April, nearly three quarters of all individuals held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction–of those who do have criminal convictions, most are for minor, nonviolent offenses. It is also worth noting that being undocumented is a civil violation under U.S. law, not a criminal offense.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently admitted in a letter to a federal judge that the legal basis ICE used for virtually all arrests at 26 Federal Plaza was falsified.
The same arrests and subsequent detentions are now the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging violations of First and Fifth Amendment rights. The trial, which began this week, has already revealed messages from ICE agents detailing the health crises that permeated the facility, including “multiple” instances of detainees requiring hospital care for cardiac events and seizures.
Just days before the one-year anniversary of Nigro and other photojournalists first gaining access to these federal buildings, a New York federal judge issued an order that banned ICE agents from arresting immigrants in or around these federal courthouses except under extraordinary circumstances, such as threats to national security or an extreme public safety concern.
The following day, however, a 21-year-old man was arrested by ICE agents inside 26 Federal Plaza following a routine court hearing. The New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), with New York University (NYU) as co-counsel, filed a habeas corpus petition on the individual’s behalf and secured his release later that day.
“I feel like I’m watching a crime being committed against people who are doing the right thing,” Nigro said. “It’s very simple–do you believe in due process, or not? None of this is due process, period. That’s why [we journalists] have always said, this is a crime scene.”
Stecklow reflected on the small but consequential role he played in helping to open the door for these journalists–and ultimately, the country–to witness the Trump administration’s immigration campaign head on, invoking U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
Inside these federal buildings, the cameras have been the light. The images captured inside these hallways have reverberated far beyond the fluorescent-lit corridors, putting human faces to what would otherwise remain a story told only through court filings or government statistics–families torn apart, children in tears, men and women who disappear into stairwells and elevator shafts, their hopes of one day becoming U.S. citizens vanishing with them.
“I don’t think a lot of this happens if we don’t have the journalists in there showing people what’s going on,” Stecklow said.
This visual record, the product of the tireless and persistent efforts of photojournalists, has forced Americans to look these men, women, children and families in their faces and reckon with the intentional policy choices of the Trump administration.
Nigro has documented and endured some of the most consequential and emotionally taxing moments in recent memory, such as January 6th, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Still, he describes his work inside these federal buildings as, by far, the hardest of his career.
“When I’m home at night after I’ve filed and it’s just filtering through what I saw, it is a heavy, heavy burden, because that person that I saw disappeared yesterday, today, a week ago, they’re still in jail for trying to do the right thing,” he said. “To watch them rip a man away from his kids, and these kids are just shattered–to have that done in darkness, and no one has a record of it … it would be horrible.”
“This just seems to be a turning point for America, disregard of the rule of law, disregard for just a democratic process, the withering away of the judicial system and the immigration system, as flawed as it is,” Nigro said. “These are historical moments that I hope live on. If, after all this, we have a history of it, this will be the history of it.”
Over the course of his time documenting 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway, Nigro compiled the following short documentary of what he and other photojournalists witnessed inside these federal buildings.
ICED Out of America is currently making its way through the festival circuit, where an expanded cut is being shown.
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece.
Stories like this exist because journalists like Michael Nigro show up, day after day, to bear witness to events that would otherwise happen in darkness. Their tireless efforts help to shine a light on the people and stories that often go untold.
If this piece moved you, please consider sharing it with others.
If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments below. And if you’d like future pieces delivered directly to your inbox, please consider subscribing to Underexposed.
Editor’s note, May 31, 2026: This piece has been updated to include Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University student who was also targeted by the Trump administration alongside Yunseo Chung and Mahmoud Khalil.