Photo Essay: Bearing Witness to America’s Cruel and Unusual Treatment of Immigrants

Let’s say you have received a speeding ticket, a civil violation of the law. And let’s say you follow the rules; you pay your fine.

But instead of going about your life, let’s say you are cuffed and detained by federal agents, who then send you to rot in a private prison for years. Or worse, you are sent to a jail in a foreign country like El Salvador or Sudan.

The act of being undocumented in the United States is not a crime. Period. Full stop.

The act of being undocumented in the United States is a civil violation – just like a speeding ticket, just like littering or public intoxication.

READ: Volunteers Flock to Immigration Courts to Support Migrants Stalked and Arrested by Masked ICE Agents

No one should go to prison for such things. The judges in the New York Immigration Courts, it seems, understand this and, to my knowledge, are making no such rulings. I could be wrong, but I’ve heard no such thing.

After covering weeks of abductions and disappearances of immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City ​starting on May 29,​ I remain stupefied that I am witnessing the harvesting of human beings in real time. The judge assigns many of those who attended their mandatory check-in hearings a future court date. The federal agents loafing around in the hallways in their tactical bulk, however, ignore the judicial ruling and make an arrest regardless. And while it’s not lost on me that some of these Federal agents likely signed up for this duty, the other mostly masked operatives, who are just “following orders,” are equally complicit in violating the constitutional right of due process. And that, very simply, is the only question: do you believe in due process, or not?

Masked law enforcement officers from a mishmash of federal agencies continue to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plan inside these buildings​, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE​), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI​), C​ustoms and Border Patrol (CBP​), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the State Department, the Department of the Treasury, and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)​. 

READ: Republican Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran Calls Local Critics of ICE Agreement ‘Liars’, ACLU ‘Lunatics’

The most recent addition of these masked agents patrolling the halls is from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). As the name suggests, they are charged to guard diplomats, U.S. Ambassadors, the Secretary of State (Marco Rubio), and foreign dignitaries. ​Before this, I’ve only seen them overseas, in places like Ukraine. But here they are, in downtown Manhattan, carrying out arrests, and often doing ​so with a gleeful and smug malice. 

The​ DSS agents behave like bar bouncers, snatching and bull rushing people into the shadows mere moments after they step out of a courtroom. Note: There are lawyers in these hallways offering counsel (and often translation services). ​But the DSS grab-and-dash tactic is just another ​blatant ​negation of due process, as the immigrants have, as stated in the Constitution, the right to counsel. 

The ​general coterie of agents has ​ramped up their intimidation tactics against the press, too, ​blocking access, grabbing cameras, making threats, some ​of which are oafish (“I’ll put the cuffs on you”).​

Other threats are more overt and repugnant. One afternoon, on July 18, 2025, after a group of agents lost their bid to prevent journalists from entering the hallways, one agent commented, “This is some First Amendment bullshit,” within earshot of two journalists, who also have muddy recordings of the second agent’s reply:

“Yeah, that’s what the Second Amendment is for.”

Other agents have surreptitiously muttered their discomfort to journalists about what they are doing. “Last year I was solving a murder, now I’m doing this shit,” one said in an elevator. “I’m not a bad person,” one pleaded, and then went on to handcuff a sharply dressed man exiting his mandatory court check-in.  Another admission occurred after a woman was marched into a ​grim staircase, pleading, sobbing to masked agents for mercy, an ATF agent said, “I didn’t sign up for this.”

I wonder what the “this” is that they didn’t sign up for? 

Is it that they see the terror that riots in the eyes of these people, including young children? Is it that the majority of those being detained do not have criminal records? Is it the acknowledgement that they are the engine of human wreckage and the initiator of generational trauma? The immigrants, certainly, didn’t sign up for that.

There is a profit component to this deportation plan, too, and it goes beyond ICE offering a signing bonus of up to $50,000 for retired employees who return to work. 

The profit model for private prisons revolves around contracts with government entities. These contracts typically involve a per diem rate, where the government pays the private prison company a fixed amount per inmate per day. The per diem rate covers the costs of housing, food, medical care, and other operational expenses. Some private prison contracts include occupancy quotas or minimum bed guarantees, requiring the government to maintain a certain number of inmates in the facility.

READ: ‘Unprecedented and Disturbing’: Hundreds of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detainees Held Without Charges, Barred From Legal Access

Alligator Alcatraz is not one of these prisons, at least not yet, but someone is making a profit from hawking the repulsive merchandise.

America, let’s say, has become cruel and unusual.