Masked federal agents have pepper-sprayed a 72-year-old woman near a park, and agents appeared at a hospital emergency room to treat a detainee.
Masked federal agents pepper-sprayed a 72-year-old woman in New York
Masked federal agents pepper-sprayed a 72-year-old woman in New York. The city is seeing increases in immigration enforcement.
NEW YORK − A surge of federal immigration enforcement officers to the nation’s largest city is spurring dramatic confrontations across several immigrant enclaves.
In New York City, masked federal agents have pepper-sprayed a 72-year-old woman near a park and agents brought a detainee with a prior tuberculosis diagnosis to be evaluated at a hospital emergency room.
New York officials and immigrant rights advocates have responded with demonstrations and trainings in the latest standoff over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement expansion.
“If they flood the city, we’re gonna do the same,” Francis Madi, director of leadership initiatives and volunteer programs at the advocacy organization New York Immigration Coalition, told USA TODAY. “We’re gonna flood the city with information, mass information. We’re gonna be out in the streets.”
In recent days, the New York Immigration Coalition said it has confirmed sightings of ICE agents in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island, all in immigrant enclaves. Agents also took an Ecuadoran detainee to a hospital in Manhattan.
Federal officials have long complained about the city and state’s so-called sanctuary laws that limit local law enforcement from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the Trump administration had held off on large-scale immigration enforcement in New York City, President Donald Trump’s former hometown and a major economic engine, opting instead for smaller enforcement actions including arrests inside federal immigration court in Manhattan.
But in recent weeks, administration officials have threatened to flood the five boroughs, home to long established immigrant enclaves from around the world. More than one-third of New Yorkers are foreign-born, according to a 2026 city report. The city has distinct immigrant neighborhoods speaking where Spanish, Arabic, Haitian Creole or Mandarin may be more prevalent than English.
Administration officials say New York Democrats allow havens for immigrants who have been charged with or convicted of crimes.
“There’s going to be a surge, and there needs to be a surge,” Tom Homan, the White House border czar, told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on July 19, when asked about immigration enforcement in New York City. “But I am not going to show our hand, because, you know, there are well-funded groups who will try to impede, interfere. We’re not going to give them any upside on this.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said anyone present illegally in the United States can and will be deported. “The Trump Administration is totally committed to enforcing federal immigration law,” Jackson said in a statement.
Tense standoffs in NYC between ICE, protesters
Tense standoffs have already unfolded in recent days.
One of the most active areas that may give insight is a residential street corner in the Inwood neighborhood, at Manhattan’s northernmost tip. Once a haven for Irish immigrants, it now has the largest concentration of Dominicans in the United States, along with large numbers of Mexican and Central American immigrants.
On July 30, footage captured ICE officers using pepper spray on a crowd protesting near Inwood Hill Park. Footage reviewed by USA TODAY showed a masked agent walk up to Linda Wolff, a 72-year-old fashion stylist, and spray her in the face as she filmed near a street corner on her phone in front of a community garden and the Good Shepherd Catholic school.
DHS said demonstrators became “combative and verbally assaultive” after the officers were trying to recover a government-owned van that had been vandalized earlier in the day. The agency said agents used pepper spray to contain the crowd, using their training and the minimum amount of force necessary.
In an interview, Wolff, who has been active in protests against ICE, said she had traveled to Inwood from Midtown Manhattan after hearing of federal officers’ presence on social media. She said she exchanged words with a tow truck driver who was towing the van, a gray Chrysler Voyager. After she and the driver argued about him helping ICE, a masked ICE agent went to her and sprayed her in the face. A second ICE agent, dressed in all black and also masked, stood nearby with what he said on video was a taser.
“I’m just a simple demonstrator,” Wolff, whose throat was still swollen from pepper spray, said Aug. 4. “Obviously, I’m not going to do anything to get arrested. I’m going to do whatever I can to keep eyes on people.”
The New York City Police Department said in an email that its officers arrived after the incident and requested information from ICE agents but the agents refused the police request. DHS said NYPD is investigating the incident for vandalism.
John Burris, a civil rights lawyer who is representing Wolff, said his client had no physical altercation with officers, and she was exercising her First Amendment rights of free speech. He said the footage showed an ICE officer nonchalantly walk over and spray her.
“It’s more like officers who are carte blanche to do as they please, when they please,” he said. “That’s the part that’s most troubling.”
Wolff intends to file a lawsuit against the federal government for violating her civil rights, according to her attorney.
The morning of Saturday, Aug. 1, more than 100 people gathered at the entrance to Inwood Hill Park, just a few feet from where ICE officers had sprayed Wolff, to protest ICE’s recent presence. Children in little league uniforms shuffled to the baseball diamond as the neighborhood’s farmers market took place on a closed-off street right where Wolf stood.
“We’re asking folks to be nonviolent, but not to be silent,” Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, told USA TODAY at the rally. “We’re not gonna just sit by while it’s occurring.”
Trump administration aims to ramp up deportations
The Trump administration has been mired in controversy over aggressive tactics in other American cities: immigration officers fatally shot two American citizens in Minnesota, triggering protests. Department of Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin promised quieter operations, in contrast to sweeping street raids seen in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago. In July, traffic stops in Houston and Maine turned deadly when ICE officers shot into vehicles, killing two unarmed men.
“Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country including in New York,” Katherine Currie, an agency spokeswoman, said in response to emailed questions. “We do not discuss future or ongoing operations.”
Tactics in New York appear to depart from the low-profile enforcement operations in recent months, as federal agents appear more visible in vehicles and out on the street. Agents have appeared masked, in contrast with a New York state law banning law enforcement from wearing masks; a federal judge recently issued a temporary injunction blocking the state law for now.
Preparing for ICE on streets
In Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood, city officials and immigrant rights organizers on July 31 canvassed East 116th Street, a commercial corridor lined with Mexican and Puerto Rican bakeries, Latino grocery stores and West African street vendors selling clothes or phone cases.
At the entrances to subway stops, volunteers with the New York Immigration Coalition distributed cards listing people’s rights if they’re stopped by ICE. In businesses, volunteers handed out bright yellow laminated signs indicating private spaces, or areas where only employees are allowed, which theoretically requires immigration officers to have signed judicial warrants to enter spaces for their enforcement operations.
In Meli Taqueria, specializing in Mexican cuisine from the state of Guerrero, co-owner Rita Martinez took several pamphlets and a yellow private sign. She planned to put up the signs as a precaution if immigration officers came to East Harlem like she saw them flood other American cities.
“I have not seen that, and I don’t want to see that,” Martinez said in Spanish.
However, about eight months earlier, Martinez said federal immigration agents stopped her where she lives nearby in the South Bronx and asked for her identification. She added she had nothing to worry about then, but she worried for others now.
City Councilmember Elsie Encarnacion, a Democrat who represents East Harlem and chairs the New York City Council’s immigration committee, said increasing sightings of ICE are creating fear, causing some to skip school, medical appointments or shopping. She said she hopes to educate residents on their rights and city resources available to them if confronted by ICE raids.
“I know that it’s coming,” she said. “We have to operate with that expectation now.”
On Monday, Aug. 3, federal immigration officers were back in Inwood, a couple blocks from where Wolff was pepper-sprayed, in front of the Good Shepherd Catholic Church.
Bystanders recorded a black Ford F-150, with heavily tinted windows, that was illegally parked in front of a bus stop. Demonstrators blew whistles and yelled “la migra,” slang for immigration enforcement officials, as they recorded the vehicles on their phones.
The Ford truck only moved when the Nissan was towed, briefly flashing red-and-blue lights. A few people followed the truck drive past Dominican and Mexican restaurants, barbershops and a grocery store before it appeared to leave the neighborhood.
At the street corner, people waiting for the bus pulled out their phones to record. No one appeared to have been detained before they boarded.
Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@usatoday.com or on Signal at emcuevas.01.