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A 7-year-old student at P.S. 89 in Queens was detained along with her 19-year-old brother and their mother at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan this week — the first known ICE arrest of a New York City child under the age of 18 during the second Trump administration.
Within a day, the mother and girl were sent to a family detention center ICE recently reopened in Texas — separated from the 19-year-old, who was held inside the agency’s ad-hoc lockup on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza before being sent to Delaney Hall in Newark as of Friday morning, according to court records and one attorney working with the family.
The Ecuadorian mother of four, Martha, whose last name THE CITY is withholding due to the precarity of her situation, lived in Jackson Heights with 19-year-old Manuel and the 7-year-old girl. Martha’s two other children, a 21-year-old son, Kevin, and a 16-year-old daughter, came to the United States separately and were not required to attend the ICE check-in this week.
In a letter shared by the family’s lawyer, Laura La Sala, the principal of P.S. 89Q: The Jose Peralta School of Dreamers, begged ICE for her student’s release.
“She is a kind, respectful, and dedicated young lady. Her unexpected removal will cause significant disruption to her learning and will likely have a deep emotional impact on her classmates and our entire school community,” La Sala wrote. “She belongs with her family and her classmates, where she can continue learning and growing.”
The principal didn’t respond immediately to a request by THE CITY for additional comment.
Astrid Avedissian, an immigration attorney working on behalf of Martha’s 16-year-old daughter, said her client, who is also a public school student in Queens, is grief-stricken.
“She’s here with an older sibling who is barely an adult,” Avedissian said, adding that the 16-year-old high schooler, now in the care of her 21-year-old sibling, spent Wednesday evening weeping in her law office.
“The heartbreak of this torn family, with its unprotected and traumatized and jailed children, was overwhelming.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that runs ICE, hasn’t responded to THE CITY’s request for comment on the three family members’ arrest.
This is the first immigration arrest of a New Yorker under the age of 18 this year that THE CITY has been able to corroborate through legal advocates, family members, and ICE and immigration court records.
But ICE arrest data obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project shows that the New York City field office, which covers parts of Long Island and several counties north of the city, arrested 48 children in June and July as part of a wave of immigration arrests across the country. Of those children, 32 have already been deported.
Martha and the two children she was arrested with at the ICE check-in arrived from Ecuador in 2022. Kevin joined the family a year later, making the journey alone at the age of 17. Her now 16-year-old daughter arrived in 2024, also making her way to the United States border alone.
A judge denied Martha’s asylum claim in June of last year and issued an order to remove all three family members from the country, court records show. The family tried to appeal the decision, but their former attorney filed the paperwork too late, Avedissian said. A judge refused to consider the appeal, dismissing it last December.
“It’s unjust, we were trying to do things the right way,” Patricio, Martha’s boyfriend of three years, said in Spanish. THE CITY is withholding Patricio’s full name due to his immigration status.
“It’s a trap for people,” he said, adding both he and Martha worked long hours at a shoe and clothing factory in Manhattan where they met. “We’re people who came to work, but this is what we’re going through.”
From check-ins to lockups
Uproar has been mounting over ICE’s arrests of New York City students over the age of 18 at what had been routine immigration court hearings, most recently the arrest of 20-year-old Mamadou Mouctar Diallo. Those courthouse arrests in New York City have thus far not targeted children.
But Mariposa Benitez and Melisa Velez, the founders of Mitlalli NYC, a volunteer detention support network for the families of people arrested at ICE check-ins and immigration courthouses, said that ICE sometimes targets children for arrest at check-ins, where people may already have orders of removal from a judge. While adults can be trapped in detention centers for months, ICE has few family detention centers, meaning the agency often targets people it intends to deport swiftly, sometimes within days.
Benitez and Velez said they’ve seen five other families with young kids arrested at ICE check-ins at 26 Federal Plaza in recent weeks — all of whom have since been speedily deported. The group launched a campaign to pressure ICE to release Manuel.
Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city Department of Education, said when the agency learns a student has been detained, it tries to connect families with legal support.
“New York City Public Schools stands with all of our students, and we are committed to supporting every child and family in our system,” she said. “We want to reassure all families: our schools are safe, welcoming places, and we encourage you to continue sending your children to school, where they are cared for and valued.”
‘We didn’t know what happened to them’
Immigration courthouse arrests have unfolded in recent weeks before droves of volunteer court watchers, journalists, and photographers. These have exclusively targeted adults.
But ICE check-ins are a much quieter affair. Many days of the week, even on weekends, a line of adults and families wait outside 26 Federal Plaza, to be let in to check in with ICE office on the ground floor, before being ushered to the agency’s offices upstairs. Some never leave on their own accord.
ICE has three satellite offices — one in Fordham in the Bronx, one in Jamaica, Queens, and one across the street from 26 Federal Plaza on Elk Street in Lower Manhattan, where people also report regularly to the agency and private contractors working on its behalf.
Some people showing up have longstanding removal orders and have reported annually to the agency for years, assuring ICE they are still leading law-abiding lives. Others still have pending asylum claims and are newly required to check in with ICE.
Soon after President Donald Trump took office, immigrants described being ordered to show up more regularly for ICE check-ins, sometimes several days in the same week. Arrests at these check-ins have occurred sporadically since. THE CITY witnessed one spree in early June, observing over 30 arrests over the course of two days at the Elk Street office across from 26 Federal Plaza.
In the weeks ahead of Martha’s ICE check-in on Monday, she was not herself, Kevin told THE CITY in Spanish. Kevin’s last name is also being withheld because of his own pending immigration case.
“For almost a month now, I almost didn’t recognize her,” he said. “She was so depressed, crying.”
Kevin spent the past week staying with his mother and younger siblings in Jackson Heights. He had a few days off from the restaurant where he works in Patchogue, L.I., and lives with relatives there. He did his best to cheer her up. “‘Nothing bad is going to happen,’” he consoled her.
Martha’s family attended one mandatory appointment Monday at the Queens office, but officials there told her to show up the next day to 26 Federal Plaza with her two kids.
On Tuesday, Kevin stopped hearing from his mother. Instead, he got an urgent text from his 19-year-old brother saying that he’d been detained and separated from their mother and youngest sibling.
“I lost contact with her, I didn’t know if they were OK. My little sister, my brother, I didn’t know where they were,” Kevin recalled. “I couldn’t sleep, because we didn’t know what happened to them.”
The next morning Martha called Patricio from Texas. Patricio said the family is grappling with how to move forward.
“I wish the government would have a little compassion with people who came to work. Because some people are doing bad, we’re all playing,” he said. “Think of the children, the women, all of us.”
