Brawl between migrants and police in New York’s Times Square touches off backlash
NEW YORK — A video showing a group of migrants arguing with police in Times Square has created a political furor and renewed debate over a long-standing policy in New York City that limits cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities.
The surveillance footage, recorded on January 27 outside a homeless shelter in Manhattan, shows several men kicking officers on a sidewalk and trying to pry them away from a man who police had taken to the ground. Police have arrested seven people in connection with the attack, although prosecutors have dropped charges against one person they say may not have been involved.
No one was seriously injured, but video of officers being assaulted has sparked waves of public outrage. Some of that anger is directed at prosecutors and the justice system after some of those arrested were released from jail while awaiting trial.
New York City officials are increasingly targeting the tens of thousands of asylum seekers the city has housed in shelters and hotels over the past year with dire rhetoric. Some of the comments have stunned immigration advocates, who say they are stoking hatred over the actions of a few bad apples.
“A wave of migrant crime has swept our city,” Police Commissioner Edward Caban said Monday at a news conference about a Venezuelan man wanted in a series of cellphone robberies. He compared the suspect’s accomplices to “ghost criminals” and claimed they came to New York “with no criminal history, no photos, no social media.”
The NYPD released a video of Mayor Eric Adams joining officers as they raided a Bronx apartment building Monday morning in connection with that investigation. The video featured ominous music and an officer warning of “migrants preying on vulnerable New Yorkers,” while showing footage of a woman being dragged behind a scooter while stealing a purse.
However, police and city officials asked for details to substantiate the claim of a crime wave but said they could not provide them because the city does not track crime trends based on the nationalities of suspects.
Most crime categories have fallen since the wave of migrants began 18 months ago.
Alexa Avilés, the head of the City Council’s immigration committee, accused the mayor and the NYPD of engaging in “the same old Trumpian fear mongering and systematic scapegoating of a diverse and vulnerable group of people.”
“I thought crime had gone down?” Avilés added. “Where is the evidence to support these claims?”
In press appearances Monday, Adams noted that the vast majority of the nearly 175,000 migrants who have come to the city are law-abiding. He said it would be wrong for “every New Yorker to view as criminals those who try to achieve the next step in the American Dream.”
But in recent days, Adams has also shown a willingness to push back on a series of laws that often prevent the city from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Adams, a moderate Democrat and former police commissioner, described the Times Square incident as “an attack on the very foundation of our symbol of safety” and called on the City Council to consider “whether there should be more cooperation” with federal immigration officials. has not worked out.
Since 2014, police and city jails have not been allowed to hold people in custody on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they have been convicted of certain violent crimes and a judge has issued an order for their removal.
Federal immigration authorities have no presence in the city’s prison system. The City’s resources are not intended to be used to assist in the detention and deportation process.
Experts said it was not immediately clear what role the city’s so-called “sanctuary” policy might have played in the cases of the men accused of attacking officers in Times Square.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to an emailed inquiry about whether they were trying to detain the people involved in the brawl.
Although police officials have expressed outrage that five of the six arrested suspects have been released, the city’s immigration policies do not influence the decisions of prosecutors and judges who set bail.
In response to public criticism, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said his office was still working to ensure all the men were properly identified. One of the arrested men was not charged because there was insufficient evidence to prove his involvement, a Bragg spokesman said.
He said more people involved in the attack were likely to be arrested in the coming days. Prosecutors are expected to present evidence to a grand jury on Tuesday.
Supporters of sanctuary laws say they increase public safety by ensuring that immigrant communities do not fear interacting with the legal system — not only as criminal defendants, but also as witnesses or potential victims of crimes.
A decade ago, New York City held about 3,000 people in custody each year with the aim of helping federal immigration authorities initiate detention and deportation proceedings. In some cases, immigration attorneys said, police would proactively alert federal authorities immediately after an arrest — long before a conviction was obtained.
At a news conference Monday alongside conservative elected officials, Kenneth Genalo, director of the New York field office for ICE, said the city’s lack of cooperation had made it more difficult to deport criminals.
“We will no longer be contacted,” he said. “There are hundreds of people being arrested across the city, and if we can’t determine which ones are the most violent, unfortunately we’ll have to find out through the media.”
Murad Awawheh, executive director of the Immigration Coalition, warned that the mayor’s comments about rolling back sanctuary protections could have a chilling effect among the city’s more than half a million undocumented immigrants.
“Why are they fanning the flames now?” Awawdeh said. “It seems like he’s trying to get people to look away from the bigger issues, which is his lack of management of the city right now.”