An ICE agent grabs maintain of New York News Police Bureau Chief Dean Moses at 26 Federal Plaza on Sept. 30, 2025.
Obtained by New York News
When our police bureau chief, Dean Moses, and two different journalists had been pushed round by masked ICE brokers at Federal Plaza final week, we reached out to the Division of Homeland Safety for remark concerning the incident.
The response we obtained was not solely filled with blatant lies, however it was rattling insulting to our intelligence.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Division of Homeland Safety, issued an announcement that blamed “agitators and members of the press” for the incident. She claimed that these people “obstructed operations,” which concerned masked ICE brokers arresting a human being she described as “an illegal alien from Peru.”
McLaughlin’s assertion was patently false. We witnessed it ourselves on the scene. Video displaying the incident that went viral on social media additionally undermined the lies within the DHS consultant’s assertion.
The 2 ICE brokers confronted the person inside a public elevator that was open to the general public; there have been no posted restrictions on who could possibly be contained in the carry. Moses walked contained in the elevator when the ICE brokers grew to become aggressive and pushed him. Different reporters and photographers exterior the elevator, not even contained in the automobile, captured the chaos that unfolded.
If McLaughlin and DHS had been searching for “agitators” guilty for the Sept. 30 incident at Federal Plaza, they’ll take a look at the ICE brokers concerned — and themselves within the mirror.
For months, ICE brokers — a lot of them hiding their faces behind masks — have set upon folks attending court-mandated hearings at Federal Plaza immigration courtroom. They’ve made a spectacle of dragging confused folks away with little rhyme or motive. They’ve created scenes of agony through which family members of detainees, together with younger youngsters, are left crying and begging in despair.
As dangerous because it has been in Federal Plaza currently, it has been worse in locations like Illinois, California and Oregon — the place ICE brokers are tear-gassing and beating protesters and abducting anybody of their sights, together with residents.
What’s the level of this overt exertion of pressure? What good does this serve the American folks? How does this make us safer? How does this assist People belief ICE? How does it not shatter the folks’s belief in regulation enforcement as an entire?
The First Modification proper of the press to report freely should not be infringed. A free press should have the ability to report the info as they’re, as Moses and different journalists have completed at Federal Plaza with out prior incident. We is not going to settle for an surroundings through which ICE and the DHS intimidate and push our reporters round and deprive us of our First Modification rights.
McLaughlin closed her assertion with an enchantment: “Again, we are urging the media and politicians to stop fanning the flames of division and stop demonization of law enforcement.” That is gaslighting on steroids.
From what we’ve witnessed at Federal Plaza final week, from what we’re seeing round America in the present day, the one group that should cease “fanning the flames of division and stop demonization of law enforcement” is ICE itself.
