Security guard Asael Jules breaks down in tears in a moment of tender humanity while witnessing the despair of Grace, a distraught migrant mother and child from Ecuador after her husband was detained by ICE at his immigration court hearing in New York NY on August 20, 2025. “Please help me. Take me too.” she wept as he was led away. Traumatized children are caught in the crossfire of family separations during US President Donald Trump’s controversial mass deportation effort.

Security guards are tangled in the middle of ICE, respondents, observers, activists and press as courthouse dynamics play out in this new normal in America. Sometimes it is the quiet moments that resonate most profoundly in the collective conscience of a nation.

After an arduous journey seeking asylum and the American dream, some react with anguish and tears, others walk quietly on their final steps to a new destiny at the Jacob Javits Federal Building.

There is a vast political divide. Some protest, decrying a lack of due process and a slippery slide into fascism. Others applaud.

And daily, detentions continue.