Last winter, Virginia tearfully relayed an incident from the previous holiday season, when she and other workers at a Cypress Hills sweatshop waited for hours to receive their promised back pay after confronting the owners of the tobacco-processing business. 

Virginia, who like other workers who spoke with THE CITY asked that her real name not be published, worked 13-hour days, six days a week in a cramped unventilated shop for HotHead Grabba, a brand of ground tobacco sold in bodegas and smoke shops. 

She said the workers earned less than the hourly minimum wage and no overtime — when even they got paid at all.

She recalled how there were no gifts for their kids that Christmas: the promised money never arrived.

But on Wednesday, Virginia shed tears of joy when she learned that HotHead Grabba and three of its operators were charged with a slew of crimes that include stealing more than $310,000 in pay in a 74-count indictment unveiled by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

“My God, what a relief!” Virginia cried out in Spanish. “Finally, finally, there is justice, thank you God.”

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she added. “Our struggle was not in vain.”

The three defendants — Hunter Segree, Isayed Rojas and Joshua Howard — all pleaded not guilty at their arraignment Wednesday before Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun.

Virginia and other whistleblowers were aided by the Brooklyn-based Workers Justice Project, which learned of the sweatshop last year and worked quickly to help the sweatshop workers — many of them middle-aged mothers — gather evidence before filing formal complaints with federal and local labor authorities.

WJP has helped nearly 50 people submit wage theft complaints to the state Department of Labor and the federal Occupational Safety & Health istration. 

“This is a testament that it is possible to seek justice, it is possible to use the system to ensure that abusive employers are held able,” said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of WJP. “And we’re proud of that.”

Workers who spoke with THE CITY said they were shocked and overjoyed by news of the criminal charges.

Among them were Ana, who worked at the Chestnut Street sweatshop from August to October of 2023. She told THE CITY Wednesday that she and fellow workers toiled for 13-hour days, six to seven times a week — yet she collected only $500 in pay.

She said she is owed about $7,000 in unpaid minimum wages and overtime.

“They were completely shameless, they were completely without shame,” she said of her former bosses. “They are the biggest liars I have met in my entire life.”

As outlined in the indictment and in THE CITY’s reporting, workers were bound by a 15-lb. daily quota and told they would be paid $7 per pound of tobacco stripped — compensation that amounted to less than half of New York’s hourly minimum wage, due to the time-consuming nature of the job. 

Virginia and Ana, like other workers, were unfamiliar with New York labor laws and minimum wage requirements. They said they knew they were getting ripped off on pay, but had no idea how much they were actually owed until they met with WJP to submit their complaints.

The Chestnut Street workers were also aided in their efforts by Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who represents the Brooklyn district where the sweatshop was located and served as a liaison between WJP and the federal agencies. In a statement, she praised WJP “for sounding the alarm and to the Brooklyn DA for holding these individuals able.”

“What happened at HotHead Grabba is a disgrace. These women were taken advantage of because they were immigrants and because their employers thought they could get away with it,”  Velázquez added. “I hope this case sends a clear message that exploiting immigrant workers will not be tolerated in our city.”

Virginia and Ana have continued to rebuild their lives since quitting their HotHead Grabba jobs; they both now work as industrial cleaners. Virginia is also aiming to enroll in training to become a home health aide. They said they’re still fearful of their former bosses — who were all released Wednesday without bail — and of the Trump istration’s crackdown on immigrants.

In spite of the risks, Virginia said she urges other workers in similar positions not to let fear hold them back from fighting for their rights.

“I always tell people, and I’ll say it again: it’s never too late to raise our voice. We are not just immigrants, we are hard-working people and we have rights,” she said. “We cannot stay quiet, we have to fight for our rights. If we stay quiet, that’s when people take advantage of us.”

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The charter review commission convened by the City Council will recommend tightened oversight of city government leases, following reports that an appointee of Mayor Eric Adams steered a lease to the billionaire owner of a Wall Street office building who’d donated generously to the mayor’s legal defense fund.

The commission is set to release its preliminary recommendations for a wide variety of reforms to the city charter on Friday. In December the Council set up a charter review board, known as the Commission to Strengthen Local Democracy. In response, Adams created his own commission, which has recommended changes to the charter that would curb the Council’s powers over development.

The process by which city government spends billions of dollars contracting with private landlords to lease office space for city agencies came into question late last year after THE CITY reported on the selection of an office tower at 14 Wall St. as the new headquarters for the city Department for the Aging, an agency that currently occupies a city-owned building.

That lease deal was supervised by Jesse Hamilton, an official at the Department of Citywide istrative Services (DCAS) who is a pal of the mayor’s, while the tower is owned by Alexander Rovt, a billionaire who months earlier raised $15,000 for the mayor’s legal defense fund. Politico reported that Hamilton personally intervened to cut off a pending lease for the aging agency and instead steer the deal to Rovt.

At a subsequent Council oversight hearing led by Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), Hamilton was a no-show but DCAS officials conceded that they’d initially picked another site at 250 Broadway and made a “best and final offer” before Hamilton interceded and the negotiations switched to 14 Wall St.

The city Department of Investigation (DOI) subsequently launched a probe that is still ongoing.

The current City Charter assigns the City Planning Commission to do initial review and approval of leases, with the City Council ultimately having the power to intervene.

The charter commission now proposes to assign lease reviews to the city comptroller, an elected fiscal watchdog independent of City Hall.

The reform language would require the city agency arranging the lease — most often DCAS — to provide details on the cost benefits of proposed leases and provide a list of alternative sites that were considered.

On Thursday Restler praised the Council’s proposed charter changes, stating, “It’s clear that we need more rigorous and independent oversight of lease agreements involving the city of New York. These are very substantial financial transactions and we need to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent in optimal ways.”

He noted the investigation of Hamilton’s role in the proposed 14 Wall St. lease, stating, “There have been too many instances in the Adams istration of shady dealings. This proposal would help ensure that lease transactions are above board.”

The proposed lease remains on hold. The 14 Wall St. dealings all happened behind closed doors because the process by which the city chooses which landlords win lucrative leases is handled privately. 

“This is our attempt to place the responsibility in the appropriate office and also making sure that office has the appropriate information,” said Danielle Castaldi-Micca, executive director of the council’s commission. “We think the comptroller’s office may be a more appropriate place to review what are essentially contracts.”

She did not directly link the proposed change to the 14 Wall St. affair, but noted, “I’ve been in government a long time, our commissioners have been in government or government adjacent for a long time. Sometimes there are illustrative examples.”

The recommended reforms to be released Friday are preliminary. A series of public hearings starting June 16 and ending July 1 will then take place, followed by a final report later this summer. 

The Council could get this proposed reform on the November ballot, but if not, it will likely be put before voters next year — after the mayoral election.

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Jessica, a 33-year-old special education teacher at a local private school, was sitting damp-eyed on a stoop near immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza.

Her husband, Jean Carlos, had come Monday morning for a hearing in his asylum case, and Jessica, feeling a growing sense of unease, had decided to accompany him.

The two exchanged WhatsApp messages throughout the morning while Jessica waited outside in a nearby park. But when THE CITY encountered Jessica on that afternoon, it had been hours since she’d heard from him.

“I don’t even want to get up,” Jessica said. “I feel like I’m leaving him here.”

Jessica, a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens to Ecuadorian parents, has a two-year-old daughter with Jean Carlos, who’s also 33 and just arrived from Ecuador last year. The family is one of many whose have been separated this week by ICE agents as they round up immigrants leaving routine court appearances in Lower Manhattan immigration courthouses as part of the Trump istration push to massively increase the number of deportations. 

Those arrests, along with others at ICE check-ins at a nearby office building, have left the streets around Foley Square full of people waiting anxiously for their loved ones to return from a scheduled visit, with many dazed and teary-eyed after losing with someone who entered an immigration proceeding and never returned. 

Late Monday morning, Jean Carlos’s messages to Jessica shifted from ordinary to urgent. 

“Ahh, so many ICE police, I hope nothing happens,” he wrote in Spanish at 11:04, according to WhatsApp messages shared with THE CITY.

“Don’t scare me like that,” she wrote back a minute later. 

“They’re outside of the room,” he responded. 

‘Amazed by All the Lights’ l5i4o

Jessica often spent summer vacations in Ecuador, visiting extended family in the seaside city of Manta, where her mother is originally from. On one such visit in 2020, she met Jean Carlos at a family quinceañera. Both Jessica and Jean Carlos have two sons from previous relationships, and the tenderness he showed his own kids and hers  caught her eye right away.

THE CITY is withholding both of their full names due to the precarity of Jean Carlos’s immigration case.

The relationship continued long-distance, with summers spent together in Ecuador. “He was funny. We liked the same music. I like the beach. He likes to surf. He likes adrenaline,” she said. The two were an easy match. 

They got married in Ecuador in 2021 and started the paperwork for a spousal visa so they could be reunited in New York City. Three years later, still maintaining the long-distance relationship, Jessica gave birth to a baby girl. 

“I gave birth alone. He was like, ‘I promise you I’ll be here for her first birthday,’” she recalled. 

While Jean Carlos continued waiting for his spousal visa, he faced mounting threats from gangs shaking him down for a cut of the money he made as a street vendor selling hamburgers. Finally, he decided to take his chances and make his way to the United States border. En route he was robbed multiple times, kidnapped and broke his foot. But by the spring of 2024 he made it across the border on crutches. 

The couple had a happy reunion in New York City, a few weeks before their daughter’s second birthday, and Jessica got to see the city she’d grown up in with new eyes when she took Jean to ride the Staten Island Ferry and visit Times Square. 

“He was amazed by all the lights,” Jessica said, reminiscing about how Jean Carlos once exclaimed, “‘This is what I see in the movies!’”

“Me as a New Yorker, I don’t like being where there’s a lot of people, but I was a tourist with him,” Jessica recalled. This summer, the two planned to go on a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park and ride on a double-decker bus, things she always thought were corny. 

Jean Carlos, working odd construction jobs, was on edge that immigration enforcement might show up at any given job site, Jessica said. He applied for asylum and had his fingerprints taken as part of the process, continuing to work through the proper channels. Even as rumours spread on TikTok of courthouse arrests, he was determined to show up. 

On Monday, Jessica called out of work to head to court with him. The two left their Queens apartment in the early morning, saying goodbye to their 2-year-old daughter, who they left with a caretaker.

“It was like he knew,” Jessica said. “He hugged her this morning [and said], ‘If I don’t see you later, Mommy’s coming back.’”

“I was like, ‘Don’t say stuff like that.’”

‘A Farce Already’ 27f1k

Jessica and Jean Carlos arrived at the lower Manhattan courthouse just as the Trump istration was pushing to vastly expand the use of “expedited removal,” which it says allows them to end court proceedings and rapidly remove anyone who has been in the country for less than two years.

That’s part of an ongoing effort to massively increase the number of arrests, and deportations, nationwide — a move that necessarily means targeting people with no criminal histories. This Tuesday, the agency made 2,200 arrests nationwide, according to NBC News, its record for a single day.  

That push has hit lower Manhattan hard, with ICE agents using three adjacent immigration courthouses as well as offices where immigrants report for required check-ins to make dozens of arrests this week. 

Inside courtrooms. THE CITY has repeatedly seen immigration judges dismissing cases at the request of government lawyers.

Immediately after those cases were dropped, some immigrants were arrested just outside of their courtrooms by federal agents, many wearing masks. 

The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week that its agents often wear face coverings to “protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected gang , murderers and rapists.”

When the mass arrests inside the court building began this Monday, ICE agents huddled together in the lobby to grab people exiting elevators. 

Later in the week, as more reporters and activists began showing up to document the detentions, ICE agents moved from the lobbies up onto the floors of immigration court, lurking in the hallways to grab people as they exited hearings and escort them to the freight elevator.

Earlier this week, THE CITY saw one judge offer several people 30-day extensions so that they could research the government’s moves to toss their cases. But even after attorneys informed ICE officers that their clients’ cases were still ongoing, the people were outside the courtroom. 

Andrés Santamaria, an attorney with the immigrant-led advocacy group Make the Road New York, said he’d witnessed some cases where an immigration judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss outright — but people were still detained after exiting courtrooms nonetheless.

Santamaria said the situation highlights how little power immigration judges, who are executive branch employees of the Department of Homeland Security rather than of the judiciary, really have. 

“This whole thing is a farce already,” said Santamaria. “Anyone who is here two years [or less] is at risk of this,” he said. 

‘They’re Taking People’ 3n3k3f

After ICE agents first showed up outside the courtroom Jean Carlos was in, he and Jessica continued messaging back and forth. At 12:46, just over an hour and a half after he’d first told her about the ICE police, as he called them, outside the courtroom door, the arrests began.

“They’re taking people. Love. What the fuck,” he wrote. 

“What are you talking about, love, what did they say.”

Jean Carlos had time to make a quick video call, telling Jessica he loved her and their daughter, and snapping photos of his immigration court paperwork. 

They show that his judge hadn’t allowed the government’s request to dismiss his asylum case, and he was due back in court in June of 2026. 

Then Jessica stopped hearing from him. 

Hours later, she was still sitting on a stoop a few blocks away, eyes damp with tears, uncertain what had happened to her husband and debating what she should do next. Attorneys who were present at 26 Federal Plaza later confirmed to her he had been detained.

“How do you expect people to do things the right way if you’re going go arrest them like this,” she wondered. “How do I go back home now and look at my daughter?”

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Real estate interests and their allies downtown and outside Manhattan are making a final push to renew a decades-old tax break before the state legislature adjourns next week.The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, or REAP, has existed for years but will expire June 30 unless the Senate and Assembly legislation renewing it.

REAP was left out of the budget deal reached in late April even as the legislature approved extensions or improvements of a series of other tax breaks, including a $100 million-a-year increase and a lengthy extension to the controversial film tax credit.

Also not included was a new proposal from Mayor Eric Adams called RACE — for Relocation Assistance Credit for Employees — designed to fill older office buildings in Manhattan.

Last week a delegation led by the Five Boro Jobs Campaign, composed of the Real Estate Board of New York, borough chambers of commerce and business improvement districts, went to Albany to argue their case for the two tax breaks. Borough presidents from Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx sent a letter to legislative leaders Monday ing both.

The Adams istration backs both incentives as does Gov. Kathy Hochul, who included them in her original budget proposal.

“REAP and RACE are wins for our entire city,” said deputy mayor Adolfo Carrión, who also went to Albany to lobby for age. “They will help turn empty offices into bustling businesses and create good-paying jobs for New Yorkers across the five boroughs.”

But this year, state senators from Manhattan have put up a roadblock to their renewal, arguing that with Manhattan still not recovered from the pandemic the city should not be offering incentives for companies to relocate to other boroughs.

They fiscal watchdogs who have long criticized the programs. A report from the Independent Budget Office this spring noted its analysts didn’t have access to the business tax filing data required to evaluate REAP.

The Citizens Budget Commission has long been a skeptic as well.

“It would be best to evaluate REAP before a long-term extension to determine whether it is worth the cost or should be tweaked,” said CBC president Andrew Rein.

Compared with other tax breaks, the cost of REAP is modest, totaling about $28 million a year. It dates back to 1987, when companies were fleeing the city for New Jersey, and provides a $3,000 annual tax credit for 12 years for every employee a company moves to most areas north of 96th Street in Manhattan or to the other boroughs. It expires June 30.

RACE would authorize the city to provide a one-time $5,000 credit per full-time worker for firms moving to New York and leasing at least 10,000 square feet in a building built before 2000. As proposed by Adams it would be relatively modest, capped at 500 employees per firm and 3,000 in total.

Business leaders in the boroughs outside Manhattan insist they need help to overcome the damage the pandemic did to their office sectors as they are not seeing the increased leasing occurring in Midtown.

While places in Brooklyn like DUMBO and Industry City are seeing activity, the vacancy rate for office space in downtown Brooklyn is about 22%, said Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership BID.

 “We have a much smaller amount of desirable Class A office space. Every lease counts and REAP makes a huge difference,” she said. In response to Manhattan legislators, she added, “I don’t think that REAP undermines the strength of Manhattan. We just want Brooklyn to get a share of office leases.”

Downtown Manhattan has its own REAP benefit, which was ed following 9/11 and also needs to be renewed. Its benefits are similar but firms must come from out of state to qualify or, if they are located elsewhere in the city, must grow their payroll by 25% or add 250 employees. Only 2.24 million square feet of office space was leased last year in lower Manhattan.

“Unfortunately for us 2024 was a terrible year in commercial leasing, worse than after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis,” said Jessica Lessin, head of the Downtown Alliance BID. “We have lost our momentum.”

What improvement has occurred in the area is primarily the result of office buildings being converted to residential use, but 20 million square feet of lower Manhattan office space remain vacant, she said.

Not surprisingly, companies that receive the tax break say it is crucial to either staying in the city or expanding their operations.

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership notes that it has seen a series of leases from architecture and other design firms. The BID says 80% of architects living in New York City are within a 30-minute commute of Downtown Brooklyn, with most residing in Brooklyn.

The Architecture Research Office needed to find more space as its lease in Hudson Square near the new Disney headquarters expired and it weighed one location in the financial district and another in downtown Brooklyn. The cost of each was close when the rent and landlord incentives were factored in.

But REAP provides the firm about $100,000 a year and it used the money to increase its staff to its current total of 35.

“It’s a big number for us,” said Stephen Cassell, founding principal of ARO. With some of his work involving universities that are subject to big cuts in federal research grants, the money is especially valuable at the moment. “Having that cash is a big deal for now.”

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After NYPD cops chased a vehicle that crashed and burst into flames early on a morning in April, the officers drove past the vehicle with the victim still inside — and continued driving, video of the fatal crash obtained by THE CITY shows.

The crash and flames killed 31-year-old Francisco Guzman Parra, whom officers from the 50 Precinct had pursued from The Bronx to Upper Manhattan via the Henry Hudson Parkway. 

A senior police official told the New York Times afterward that the department was reviewing whether the officers left the scene without reporting the deadly crash, which followed a pursuit prompted by the belief Guzman Parra was driving a stolen SUV. The officers were immediately suspended, a police spokesperson told THE CITY in the days after the crash.

“The video shows us confirmation of the neglect that was done that night,” said Guzman Parra’s sister, Shakira Guzman, 27, hours after watching security footage of the incident for the first time. “It was devastating, in a way even torturing, to see how quick this accident happened, how no help was offered, and then how long he burned for. It was a lot.”

The security footage appears to be from a camera at the top of an exit ramp that leads from the Henry Hudson Parkway to a T-intersection at Dyckman Street.

It shows a vehicle speeding down the ramp and crashing into the building across the street on Dyckman Street, which is owned by the city parks department. There appear to be flickers of flame coming from the crash scene. 

Ten seconds later, a police SUV can be seen driving quickly down the same ramp. The breaklights engage for a few seconds. The vehicle appears to come to almost a complete stop at the intersection before turning left and driving out of frame.

“In that one moment where they effectively weighed their careers to be more important than Francisco’s life, they played the role of judge, jury and executioner – and we don’t allow that here for very good reasons,” said Jeremy Feigenbaum, an attorney at the Spodek Law Group in Lower Manhattan who is representing the family. “If the cops had done their job there was at least a chance he could have gotten out of there.”

Guzman Parra’s family said it wasn’t until nearly 20 minutes after the crash that firefighters and police responded to the scene, following a 911 call that came in just before 5 a.m.  

Patrick Hendry, the president of the city’s Police Benevolent Association, previously issued a statement saying the officers weren’t able to see the crashed vehicle after they exited the parkway.

A union spokesperson on Thursday said that statement still stands. Spokespeople for the police department didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the video.

Guzman and her family are calling on the department, which has declined to identify the officers, to terminate them. They also believe criminal charges are warranted against the officers.

The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is reviewing the incident, while the office of the State Attorney General has determined after a preliminary assessment that the officers didn’t cause Guzman Parra’s death, which takes the case out of the AG’s purview.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is reviewing whether other charges against the officers are warranted, a spokesperson confirmed. Guzman Parra’s family said the DA’s office told them the officers are still suspended, with pay. 

Guzman Parra’s death came after NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch issued a directive in January intended to rein in the number of vehicle pursuits that cops engage in, a tactic that ballooned for a two-year stretch under her predecessors — particularly under the leadership of then Chief of Patrol John Chell.

THE CITY previously identified at least 17 deaths and more than 600 people injured during that stretch in collisions that followed police car chases.

The new policy restricts police officers to pursuits only in cases where felonies and violent misdemeanors are suspected, as opposed to minor traffic violations and other non-violent offenses.

Tisch promoted Chell to Chief of Department, the top uniformed post, in late December. 

Guzman said that her family referred to Guzman Parra by his second name, Andres, and that some friends called him by the nickname “Niño,” which means “kid” in Spanish.

“He was like a kid. He joked around a lot, he was always happy, always there to help,” she told THE CITY. 

“So we him as someone who was loving.”

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Jeannette Salcedo is still mulling over who to endorse in the mayor’s race. 

So Salcedo, the resident association president at NYCHA’s Castle Hill Houses in The Bronx, was taken aback when someone asked her about an Instagram post from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s with her name on it, indicating she’d endorsed him for mayor.

“How did that happen?” Salcedo asked. “I did not endorse him. I did not. I don’t know who I’m endorsing. My questions, as far as I’m concerned, haven’t been answered.”

Still, Salcedo’s name appeared with 26 other NYCHA tenant association presidents on a list the campaign released in May that indicated they all endorsed him for mayor.

But that is not the case. Five tenant association presidents who appeared on the list told THE CITY they did not endorse the former governor, saying they still need to decide amongst candidates. 

Two others didn’t reveal whether or not Cuomo won their backing, but said they never approved their names appearing on the list. 

Six presidents confirmed their endorsements of Cuomo, but of those, one said she didn’t know the list would be public. 

In a statement, Cuomo campaign spokesperson Esther Jensen pointed out that the list had been public for over a month and cast doubt on the claims.

“Something smells here,” she said. “When THE CITY reached out, we reconnected with NYCHA Tenant Leaders and learned that some had privately expressed feeling intimidated by ers of other candidates, while others simply didn’t welcome the attention that came from press inquiries.”

Over half a million New Yorkers live in NYCHA developments throughout the boroughs, and securing the endorsements of the tenant leaders can serve as a boon for any mayoral campaign. And it’s especially significant for Cuomo, who served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton and says that experience makes him the most qualified candidate on housing.

The Cuomo campaign has been afflicted by missteps, including a housing plan with garbled sections written with the help of artificial intelligence. It was twice docked matching funds as a penalty for ads bought by an independent committee that a city board said illegally coordinated with the campaign. Cuomo is appealing the decisions.

Salcedo said Cuomo’s campaign had reached out to her, and she told them she didn’t know enough to say she’d endorse him. Instead she told the campaign representative, whose name she didn’t , to put her on the list to learn more. 

Salcedo made a social media post of her own clarifying her stance and said she has now soured on considering Cuomo for mayor, given what happened.

“When you speak to someone in a leadership role, it’s important to get their words correct. You don’t just take their words and run with it,” she said. “At this point now, that threw me to the left. I don’t want any parts of you.”

NYCHA leaders like Salcedo said they are eager to know what the mayoral candidates plan to improve the aging and cash-strapped public housing stock, which faces devastating possible budget cuts from the federal government. Cuomo, the race’s frontrunner, proposed upgrading NYCHA through a five-year investment of $2.5 billion, converting more sites to private management and developing new apartments on open space on campuses, among other ideas.

‘Funky Politics’ 6d5642

Two tenant association presidents told THE CITY they found out their names appeared on the list only after someone from City Hall reached out and asked about it. A City Hall spokesperson clarified that in both cases, a community affairs staffer who had longstanding relationships with the tenant association presidents communicated informally in the context of regular business.

One of those presidents, who asked to be kept anonymous to protect her residents from any blowback, said she had a call with the Cuomo campaign but never confirmed her . She called the whole situation “dirty politics” and said the campaign “blew the trust.”

“I haven’t really made up my mind, and I don’t know who I’m voting for yet because it’s not even early voting,” she said, adding that she’d have to “face the music” the next time she saw Mayor Eric Adams. Adams has announced he will be running for reelection as an independent in November.

Lehra Brooks, Throggs Neck Houses Tenant Association president, confirmed her for Cuomo, but said she was blindsided when she saw her name and title publicly on the list. She said she found out when she got a call from Adams’ office, which sent her a copy.

“I didn’t know they were putting us out as tenant association presidents. I was speaking for me, personally,” Brooks said. “I think that this is some funky politics.”

Still, she backs Cuomo, pointing to his leadership during the pandemic.

“He did an excellent job, and I said yes, I would . When I look at the state of how we are right now, he’d be good,” she said.

Rashida Reid, president of the South Beach Houses Resident Association in Staten Island, learned her name was on the list when THE CITY ed her about it. She said she spoke to someone from the Cuomo campaign and didn’t tell them whether or not she’d him.

“I have not made up my mind,” Reid said. “I need to see what [the candidates] stand for.”

Kimberly Comes, president of the Redfern Houses Resident Council in Far Rockaway, was one of the people who accurately appeared on the list in of Cuomo.

“He came to visit our community, and he spoke with some of the residents,” she said. “I haven’t given any cash or anything like that, but we feel he would be a great mayor.”

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After years of missed deadlines, the city has finally met a legal commitment to make 50% of the yellow taxis on the road wheelchair accessible.

Taxi & Limousine Commission officials and advocates for New Yorkers with disabilities on Thursday hailed the latest development in a long-running federal class-action case — whose landmark 2013 settlement initially called for making half of the entire fleet of 13,587 taxis wheelchair-accessible by 2020.

That 2020 deadline came and went, as did a 2023 extension.

Currently, 5,140 yellow taxis — or 50.7% of those now in service — are equipped with ramps to load people who rely on wheelchairs or scooters, according to TLC. But another 3,000 or so medallion cabs remain in storage and off the road.

“When I first started, almost three years ago at the peak of the pandemic, there were about 7,000 vehicles that were in storage, or half of the medallion fleet,” David Do, TLC commissioner and chairperson said in response to a question from THE CITY. “So we’ve made great strides in recovery, but the medallion fleet still has not recovered.”

TLC ran into repeated roadblocks en route to the trying to meet 50% mark for the entire fleet, including the rise of app-based ride-hailing services such as Uber that decimated the value of taxi medallions and a pandemic that further shrunk the number of medallion cabs on city streets.

“This is real progress and there’s no doubt about it,” said Joseph Rappaport of the Taxis For All Campaign, a coalition of disabled rights advocacy organizations that first filed the lawsuit in 2011. “So you can’t help but say, ‘Hallelujah, we’ve made it this far after so many fits and starts.’”

George Daniels, the federal judge who oversaw the case, initially likened the settlement to baseball breaking the color line, labeling it “one of the most significant acts of inclusion since Jackie Robinson ed the Dodgers.”

But as city lawyers repeatedly sought more time to meet the 50% target, the bewildered judge last year scolded TLC and told both sides to come up with another formula for making it to the halfway point.   

That included an enforcement order from August 2024 requiring that all new taxis entering service be wheelchair accessible. The agency also restructured the Taxi Improvement Fund, which helps medallion owners with the costs of transitioning to wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

According to TLC, those costs can climb close to $100,000, a pricey lift for medallion owners still struggling to regain riders after the pandemic.

“That’s just for the vehicle, the retrofitting with the ramp, painting the car,” said Bhairavi Desai, president of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

At the time of the settlement in late 2013, just 213 taxis were wheelchair accessible, barely more than 1.5% of the 13,587 yellow medallion vehicles.

“I never thought I would be able to get into an accessible cab,” said Milagros Franco, 49, a motorized wheelchair . “Everyone usually takes it for granted that they have options to go on transportation.”

Kathleen Collins, a congenital quadruple amputee, praised Daniels for ordering the two sides to find a way forward after the blown deadlines.

“I love that judge,” she told THE CITY. “He made the impossible possible.”

TLC still faces another deadline in 2028 for making 50% of the entire fleet — and not just the vehicles on the road — wheelchair accessible.

“We have a little bit more work to go and we’re going to meet the deadline in three years,” Do said.

But after enduring years when being able to find a taxi in a wheelchair was a near-impossibility, riders with disabilities said they are grateful for the improvements, despite a slow-lane pace.

“It was a pain that it took as long as it did,” said Dustin Jones, a wheelchair and disability rights advocate. “But in the disability community, when you get something, it’s better late than never.”

Jones recalled the role in the case of Edith Prentiss, a fellow advocate who was involved in the Taxis for All Campaign from its origins in the 1990s until her death in 2021.

“Without her, this would not happen,” he said. “And I wish she was alive to see it.”

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This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

As chair of the New York City Council’s Land Use Committee, Rafael Salamanca has the power to determine whether development projects live or die — and it’s made him a magnet for campaign donations from the real estate industry.

Salamanca, who is now running for Bronx borough president, has long maintained a campaign committee for his city races — one that is bound by strict contribution limits for individuals doing business with the city, including developers.

But that’s not his only fundraising vehicle. A New York Focus investigation has found that Salamanca opened a second campaign committee in recent years — one which funds his campaigns for an unpaid position in the Bronx Democratic Party — that is subject to much looser rules.

Developers have donated the maximum allowed to his city campaign, then made much larger donations to the second committee — sometimes on the same day.

Over less than three years, Salamanca raised $244,000 through the second , even though he’s never faced a challenge at the ballot box for the comparatively lowly post of district leader.

“That’s an extraordinarily high amount to have in a district leader campaign chest,” said Sarah Steiner, an attorney and former chair of the election law committee for the New York City Bar Association. “It’s an unpaid position.”

Salamanca then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from the to pay for restaurant bills, bar tabs, liquor store purchases, his wife’s salary for her role as his campaign treasurer, and other expenses.

As of January, the committee had reported expenditures totaling nearly $268,000 — or $24,000 more that it raised. The discrepancy appears to be the result of errors in campaign finance reports overseen by Salamanca’s wife, Jessenia Aponte.

Since 2016, Salamanca campaign committees have paid Aponte $156,000, including $29,000 in recent years from the district leader campaign .

Normally, Steiner said, a treasurer for a district leader would “rarely get paid, or would get paid very little,” although since Salamanca is raising so much money, his filings are more extensive than the typical district leader candidate.

Since March 2022, Salamanca shelled out more than $55,000 on dining and alcohol through the second campaign , including on 46 occasions at two locations of the Bronx restaurant Enzo’s, a favorite haunt of Bronx politicos. And the recorded more than $25,000 spent on Uber rides, gas, and other vehicle-related expenses.

New York state has notably loose laws concerning what campaigns are allowed to spend their money on. A spokesperson for Salamanca’s borough president campaign, Christian Amato, said all of the politician’s spending was “tied to campaign activity or political duties.”

“In Bronx politics, meetings are often held over meals — typically at places like Jimmy’s or Enzo’s,” Amato said. “Rafael chooses to cover the tab to avoid any feeling of obligation among those he meets with. Transportation is for campaign and political activities.”

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Salamanca ran unopposed for district leader in 2022. He was reelected to the position last year, again without an opponent.

He is now running for Bronx borough president against incumbent Vanessa Gibson. They face off in a Democratic primary on June 24.

Why did Salamanca’s district leader campaigns raise and spend so much, despite never facing a challenger at the ballot box?

“The expectation is always to prepare for a potential challenge,” Amato said. “Fundraising and readiness are necessary even when an opponent doesn’t materialize.”

The transportation costs reflect Salamanca’s need to “attend meetings, events, and constituent engagements, particularly since Rafael” — unlike Gibson — “does not have a city-provided driver.”

There’s nothing illegal about Salamanca having two s. But his district leader campaign committee is not allowed to subsidize his borough president campaign, which faces a strict spending limit. While records do show certain overlaps between their spending, Salamanca’s campaign said their activities are kept strictly separated.

Under New York City’s campaign finance laws, people in the city’s “doing business” database cannot donate more than $250 to a City Council candidate or more than $320 to a borough president candidate per four-year election cycle. The law is meant to limit the influence of deep-pocketed individuals seeking to sway city government.

While city campaign finance laws are strict, the district leader is governed by much looser state laws that allow corporate donations, place no special restriction on gifts from people with government business, and generally allow much larger donations.

Salamanca has raised over $130,000 for the district leader campaign from donors to his city-level campaign, or from those connected to those donors.

Take one Bronx builder, Foxy Management, run by the father-son team of Sheldon and Jeff Fox.

Salamanca directed $728,000 in discretionary funds to a 168-unit affordable housing project for seniors in the Bronx in the 2016 city budget. The developer was Foxy Management, and Jeff Fox singled out Salamanca for praise when the project broke ground a year later.

In 2018, Salamanca was named the Land Use Committee chair, which has the power to approve or deny zoning changes sought by developers. That year, he directed $500,000 more in discretionary funds to a 177-unit senior housing development in the Bronx. Again, the developer was Foxy Management, whose principal again credited Salamanca.

Jeff and Sheldon Fox have repeatedly donated the maximum allowable amount per election cycle, $250, to Salamanca’s bids for City Council, including on March 17, 2022. That same day, Salamanca filed paperwork creating the Bronx Democratic Party district leader committee — and Sheldon immediately donated $2,500 more to the new .

In October 2022, Sheldon, Jeff, and Jeff’s wife gave a combined $10,800 more to the district leader committee. Foxy Management — which as a corporation could not donate to the city-level campaign — gave an additional $4,400.

Since Salamanca took office in 2016, Jeff and Sheldon Fox and their spouses combined have donated nearly $31,000 to his campaigns, with more than half going to Salamanca’s second campaign committee. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

There are numerous other examples of double donors.

On May 13, 2022, an official at Brooklyn-based Spigro Management LLC, as well as the wife of a company executive, cut $1,600 checks to Salamanca’s city campaign , the maximum the two could donate for a potential borough president candidacy. On that same day, both of them — plus a third company official — each gave $4,400 checks to the district leader .

Michael Muzyk, then-president of Baldor Speciality Foods, donated $1,600 to Salamanca’s City Council on June 13, 2022. Salamanca’s campaign had to refund all but $250 because Muzyk is in the city’s “doing business” database.

That same day, a corporate arm of Baldor donated $4,400 to Salamanca’s district leader . Since then, two more companies associated with Baldor have given an additional $6,000. Baldor, a Bronx-based food distribution company, has served as a vendor for New York City agencies.

In 2019, Salamanca sponsored and pushed through a property tax exemption sought by Manhattan-based Azimuth Development, as well as a zoning application allowing a 330-unit project on Bruckner Blvd. Since then, officials from Azimuth Development or their spouses have donated $6,350 to the city s and at least $3,000 to the state .

Salamanca also backed the developer’s controversial effort to demolish a 150-year-old church and turn it into ive housing. The company did not respond to questions from New York Focus.

The Salamanca campaign spokesperson, Amato, argued that Salamanca’s fundraising tactics did not undermine New York City’s low donation limits for people with business before city officials.

“Individuals who want to Rafael’s work in the community sometimes offer contributions via business checks, which cannot be accepted by the city campaign ,” Amato said. “In those instances, if they choose to contribute separately to the District Leader to community events, that is their decision.”

Salamanca’s fundraising through a second campaign is not unprecedented.

His predecessor as land use chair, former Councilmember David Greenfield, chaired the powerful committee between 2014 and 2017.

Beginning in 2013, Greenfield raised more than $300,000 through a committee set up for an unspecified state office. Like Salamanca, much of the money came from real estate developers who also donated the maximum amount to his city .

Unlike Salamanca, however, Greenfield spent almost nothing from the haul. He did not run for city council reelection in 2017 and more than $300,000 remains in the , unspent.

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In this year’s race for Bronx borough president, neither Salamanca nor Gibson are allowed to spend more than $1.78 million on their primary campaigns, and they face potential fines if they exceed the cap.

Gibson has been fined before: Following a successful City Council bid in 2013, her campaign was fined nearly $69,000, primarily for exceeding the city’s mandated spending limit. In 2020, she was fined $5,000 for allegedly seeking to use her public position to avoid a traffic violation.

If Salamanca’s district leader committee were subsidizing Salamanca’s borough president campaign, it could provide an unfair leg up and exceed the spending limit.

Salamanca’s district leader has only reported expenses through January 2025, so there is limited data indicating potential overlaps between the committees.

Still, records show that on March 15, 2024, Salamanca’s borough president campaign spent nearly $450 at a Bronx liquor store on “beverages for events,” and the same day, the district leader spent $457 at the same Bronx liquor store. Since he was on the ballot for district leader in June 2024, the purchase might be given greater latitude by city campaign finance regulators.

On Dec. 11, 2024 — after the 2024 elections were over — Salamanca’s borough president campaign spent $519 at the same Bronx liquor store for the campaign’s “fundraising.” The same day, the district leader committee spent $618 at the same store.

Salamanca’s campaign said he often has “multiple events in a single week related to both his council responsibilities and political work. Purchasing supplies on the same day for different events is routine and clearly separated.”

Between March 2024 and May 2025, the borough president campaign has spent just $506 on 24 Uber rides. The district leader has spent far more, despite Salamanca never facing an opponent at the ballot box for that office. Between March 2024 and January 2025, the district leader made 107 payments totaling over $3,200 for Uber expenses.

Through at least 2024, the district leader paid a $120 monthly bill for Internet, while through mid-May, the borough president campaign has reported no payments for Internet services.

Salamanca’s campaign said there was “no crossover” between the borough president and district leader campaign spending.

“The district leader committee s Rafael’s responsibilities as District Leader,” Amato said. “The borough president’s campaign is managed separately and is not subsidized in any way by the other .”

The district leader has also reimbursed Salamanca more than $1,100 for 12 expenses which contain no descriptions in the filings.

Aponte, who oversees those reports, has also served in the past as campaign treasurer for two other Bronx candidates, including former state senator Ruben Diaz Sr.

“She has managed multiple filings over the years without a single fine or violation,” Amato said. Aponte is not serving as treasurer for her husband’s borough president campaign.

Three years ago, the New York Post reported that Mayor Eric Adams’ parks department had filled two high-ranking, $177,000-a-year posts with figures tied to the Bronx Democratic Party.

One of the jobs went to Aponte, a longtime department employee. With the promotion, she received a $72,000 raise. The Post reported that Salamanca had campaigned heavily for Adams in 2021, helping him lock up Hispanic votes.

In 2024, according to city records, Aponte’s salary increased to $194,000.

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The nine Democratic candidates for mayor squared off Wednesday in the first televised debate of a long campaign season, with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo the frequent target of jabs from the other contenders.

The chaotic debate came 10 days before the start of early voting on June 14, with the election on June 24. 

It was the first time Cuomo faced the whole field of his rivals, face-to-face, whom he had mostly avoided so far during his run to replace Mayor Eric Adams. (The mayor is running on an independent line in the November general election.)

President Donald Trump, the city’s housing crisis and Cuomo’s record as governor loomed large over the debate stage. 

City Comptroller Brad Lander, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, former comptroller Scott Stringer, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, former Assemblymember Michael Blake and former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson took turns knocking Cuomo over his run for mayor, his record on handling the Covid-19 crisis and his 2021 resignation as governor in the face of sexual misconduct allegations.

The debate began with a question of affordability, with each candidate asked to share one big idea to make the city more affordable immediately and how they could afford to pay for it. 

Most instead offered a smorgasbord of proposals, with overlapping plans like freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments — one of Mamdani’s main ideas — or lowering it by 20% via a massive building boom, which is Tilson’s plan. 

Others pushed their housing agendas, with Speaker Adams touting the Council’s age of the City of Yes zoning changes. 

Lander said he’s the only one with “the progressive values to make this city more affordable with the public integrity to sweep away the corruption of Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo.”

Cuomo, who has led nearly every public poll, said the city has “a management crisis” and talked about his proposal to increase the minimum wage, which requires state approval. 

The s for the evening struggled to rein in the crowded stage of nine candidates, marked by frequent crosstalk and lobbed attacks mostly aimed at Cuomo.

The would-be mayors emphasized his role in undercounting the number of people who died of Covid in nursing homes and whether he ever said to “defund the police.” They attacked him on his sexual harassment allegations, and for many other decisions he made as governor. 

When asked directly by a about his sexual harassment allegations, Cuomo said “it was political, it was false” and noted that five district attorneys declined to prosecute him. (The case was also investigated by the Justice Department, which found Cuomo sexually harassed more than a dozen New York state employees.)

“I said at the time that if I offended anyone it was unintentional but I apologize and I say that today,” he said.

Blake, who did not qualify for next week’s leading candidates debate co-sponsored by THE CITY, consistently went after the former governor, citing the sexual harassment allegations that chased him from office.

“The people who don’t feel safe are young women, mothers and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo,” Blake said after a question about public safety. “That’s the greatest threat to public safety in New York City.”

Other candidates also went after Mamdani, who has been in second place behind Cuomo with recent polls showing the gap shrinking. 

Tilson criticized previous social media posts where he claimed Mamdani called the NYPD “wicked.” (In a search, THE CITY could not readily find such a post.)

Asked how the candidates would defend New York City from Trump and his istration’s attacks on immigrants, funding and more, Cuomo painted Mamdani as a weak opponent to the president. 

“Donald Trump would go through Mr. Mamdani like a hot knife through butter,” Cuomo said. “He’s been in government 27 minutes, he ed three bills, that’s all he’s done. He has no experience with Washington, no experience with New York City, he would be Trump’s delight.”

But responding to a separate question, Mamdani answered back, saying, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare — as a progressive, Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things I believe in.”

Immigration enforcement emerged as a major theme of the night, and the debate took place as Immigration Customs Enforcement has ramped up detainments, rounding up people who appear for routine court appearances, THE CITY has reported. 

All of the candidates, except Tilson, agreed that Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who organized pro-Palestinian protests on campus, should be released from immigration detention in Louisiana. Tilson said he would have to review all of the facts of the case.

The candidates criticized Mayor Adams’s decision to have ICE return to Rikers Island, with Ramos saying that the enforcement agency should be “out of our hospitals, out of our schools, out of our houses of worship and any public institution and really limit cooperation of ICE with the NYPD.” 

Myrie agreed, noting undocumented immigrants being detained at court.  

None of the candidates would reveal who they planned to rank second on their ranked-choice ballot, where voters can rank up to five people. 

They did share who they voted first in 2021. Cuomo — who was not ed to vote in New York City at the time — said he would have put Eric Adams first. Speaker Adams shared she did rank the current mayor first in 2021, but regretted it.

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Outside a nondescript office building on Elk Street in Lower Manhattan, scenes of pain and anguish unfolded on the pavement throughout Wednesday as immigrants and their family waited to see if their loved ones would return from what had been billed as routine procedures.

The basement office hosts ICE check-ins, run by private subcontractor the Geo Group. Immigrants in various stages of deportation proceedings are required to show up there as their cases wind through the immigration process.

But with the Trump istration demanding agents dramatically ramp up arrests, immigrants in New York City received urgent messages and phone calls from ICE telling them to come into the office either Tuesday or Wednesday.

That included mothers who showed up Tuesday to the same location, after receiving similar messages and that told them to return Wednesday with their children. 

THE CITY witnessed 16 people taken out of the office in handcuffs Tuesday afternoon.

The arrests continued Wednesday with at least 15 more people taken into custody. Two mothers and their young children were escorted on foot by agents across the street to 26 Federal Plaza, though it’s unclear if they were detained. 

Here’s what THE CITY observed over the course of the day. 

9:32 a.m.: Two SUVs are again parked out front of the Elk Street office, a day after the same type of vehicles were used to bring prisoners across the street to the basement garage of 26 Federal Plaza. Meanwhile, several people wait outside for loved ones who’d headed into the basement office earlier in the morning.

9:45 a.m.: A woman and a girl who appears to be a young teen are escorted by two agents across the street on foot from Elk Street to Federal Plaza. It’s not clear if they’re being detained. 

Another woman comes out of the ICE check in office and  hugs a friend who’s been waiting for her outside. The two start crying. 

As they walk away, they hold hands with a third man who says he’s waiting for his friend still inside. 

The three hold hands in prayer. “Praying to God that your friend comes out,” the woman says before the other two walk off. 

The man, Colin Campbell, 55, says he’s a U.S. citizen who is accompanying his friend, a home health aid from Guyana, to her check in. “I’m feeling so sad. She’s in there. I don’t know what will happen. I’m just praying I’m asking God to deliver her,” he says. 

10:27 a.m.: The first three clear arrests of the morning. 

A woman and two men in handcuffs are escorted into the parked SUVs by masked agents in plainclothes. “Those are the bad people, right?” Campbell asks, turning to me.

10:38 a.m.: Leaning against a wall across the street is 35-year-old Veronica, who’s waiting for her friend inside with her young son. 

“She never asked me to accompany her because nothing had ever happened before,” she says in Spanish. 

But Veronica’s friend got an urgent phone call to show up in the office and got nervous, didn’t want to come in at all today. Veronica had tried to console her, “let’s do the things correctly. You haven’t done anything wrong.” 

It’s still not clear if the two are being detained. 

Two women waiting outside exchange words in English. “My husband is in there,” an Uzbeki woman says. “My friend is in there,” an Ecuadorean woman replies. 

10:50 a.m.: A second mother and young child, this one around four or five, are walked by agents across the street to 26 Federal Plaza.

11:00 a.m.: A Turkish woman and her two kids emerge from the office, scampering across the street to hug their husband who’s been waiting outside. 

The four embrace in a group hug. “I’m feeling good,” the father says before they walk off together. 

11:15 a.m.: Fifty-year-old Hubert Mendonca, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from Guayana more than two decades ago, is waiting for his wife and baby who are inside the basement office. 

“It’s not resting good in my stomach,” he says after watching several people hauled off in handcuffs. 

“Our governmental president should have helped us by getting rid of the bad people, and the good ones… give them a second chance,” he told THE CITY.

11:30 a.m.: A couple embrace at the office entrance.

Jaen, from Colombia, has an appointment and heads inside, while his wife Ambar and their 12-year-old, daughter, Aranza, wait outside. 

11: 45 a.m.: Attorney Dave Wilkins is pacing around outside the building. Earlier in the day he accompanied a client into the basement office but was soon kicked out by a site supervisor. 

“I haven’t been able to figure out physically where my client is or what they plan to do with my client,” he says, adding that he hadn’t heard from her in about two hours. 

11:48 a.m.: Two more men are taken out in handcuffs and put into SUVs that drive off.

11:59 a.m.: Mendonca’s wife comes out and the two hug. He grabs their 3-month-old, cooing at her and calling her a princess. 

“I brought the father of the child so if something happens to me she gets to stay, she was born here,” his 28-year-old wife Katy says in Spanish, who declines to give her last name because of her ongoing immigration case. 

“My heart has returned to its place for now, it’s hard but we’ll see what happens,” he said. “But this is horrible.”

12:11 p.m.: A Venezuelan woman named Rosmely says she’s been waiting outside all morning for her daughter-in-law. 

“This makes me so nervous,” she says in Spanish. “This is so strange to me,” she said, she hadn’t heard from her daughter in law in around 40 minutes. “She hasn’t called me again, and here I am outside.”

12:57: p.m.: Ambar, 30, and her daughter have been waiting for more than two hours now. She’s getting nervous. 

“You feel so powerless,” she says in Spanish. “If you ask me, this is a fair country, but we have really suffered,” Ambar says. 

She’s from Venezuela. The two crossed the border exactly two years ago on June 4, of 2023. 

They were separated at the border and he spent several weeks before ICE released him. Their tearful reunion in the Los Angeles airport after ICE custody was documented by ABC at the time. The two both applied for asylum cases are still pending. 

1:25 p.m.: One masked agent appears to be leaving for lunch. An activist stalks after him down the block, yelling and calling him a Nazi. 

1:47 p.m.: Four women in handcuffs are marched out of the office by masked agents. Rosmely breaks down in tears. 

Her daughter-in-law is being taken away. 

Colin also starts sobbing. His friend, the home health aid, is also handcuffed. He bends over and then staggers off gasping for breath. 

Around the corner Rosmely collapses onto a curb, “This is horrible here,” she says in Spanish, “How can I tell my son?” “That girl is such so tranquil. She has no criminal record, she barely goes out,” she says in shock. 

Rosmely says she has a court date in the coming weeks but she’s planning to skip it after what happened. “No one should come here,” she says. 

2:30 p.m.: Veronica’s friend and her young child come out.

The three embrace in the roadway and walk off together. 

2:41 p.m.: Four men are walked out in handcuffs by masked agents. One is Jaen, Ambar’s husband. Her 12-year-old daughter screams and runs after him. 

Ambar wails in agony and collapses onto the sidewalk. 

As the SUVs pull away Ambar leans over a nearby fence sobbing, “My love, my love,” she murmurs over and over again.

Her lawyer attempts to console her, while 12-year-old Aranza is stone-faced, staring straight ahead. 

2:55 p.m.: The family’s lawyer Margaret Cargioli speaks to reporters gathered after having spent several hours inside the basement office earlier in the day. 

“Possibly, they were looking for people with final orders of removal, or people who were approaching the two-year mark to put them in expedited removal,” she says, reiterating what Ambar had told THE CITY earlier, that the family crossed exactly two years ago today. 

“Jaen, he came to every single ICE appointment, he was very cooperative with all the demands that were made of him. It’s a real shame they are separating families,” she says. 

4:04 p.m.: Two more men are brought out in handcuffs and put into an SUV and driven off. 

4:35 p.m.: Several masked agents leave the building, load into SUVs and drive off, seemingly finished for the day.

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