Agent fired for throwing immigrant to the ground in New York federal building

New York.- An immigration agent who pushed and threw an immigrant woman to the ground in a federal building in New York on Thursday was fired after the images went viral, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported this Friday. The incident took place at number 26 Federal Plaza, a building that ICE uses as a detention center and that has been denounced for its terrible conditions. In a video that circulated this Thursday on social media, it is seen how an agent dressed in civilian clothes violently throws a woman to the ground who, crying, begged him in Spanish not to arrest her husband. In the images, it is heard how after the altercation the officer says "goodbye" repeatedly in Spanish.

"The agent's conduct is unacceptable and is below the standard of the men and women who work for ICE," said DHS Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement sent to the press.

McLaughlin assured that ICE security forces adhere to the "most professional" standards and that the agent appearing in the video has been "relieved of his duties". The woman told the press yesterday that she and her family emigrated from Ecuador to the United States last year. In addition, the organization LatinoJustice indicated today in a statement that she had to be taken to the hospital due to the injuries caused by the altercation. "This cruelty is indefensible. Migrant families deserve dignity, respect, and due process, not brutality in the very halls of the immigration court where they seek justice," denounced Rex Chen, supervising attorney for Immigrant Rights at the organization. In recent months, the building has been the scene of arrests of immigrants by ICE agents dressed as civilians or masked who then transfer them to a detention center inside.

You may be interested in:«We are afraid, we hardly go out anymore»: the day-to-day life of Latino immigrants in Atlanta

Last week, a New York judge asked the administration of President Donald Trump to improve the conditions of the center and prohibited it from keeping detainees in spaces of less than 50 square feet (4.6 square meters). That same week, more than a dozen elected officials from New York - including city comptroller Brand Lander, and state legislators Julia Salazar and Gustavo Rivera - were arrested in a protest inside and outside the building.

This was not the first time that several officials have been arrested for civil disobedience while protesting at these facilities and subsequently released.