ICE – BROKEN FAMILIES
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Carol Guzy – United States (US)
2nd Place in EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
1st Place in Contemporary Issues – EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Title:
ICE – BROKEN FAMILIES
About the Photos:
Masked ICE agents and federal officers in balaclavas detain asylum-seekers after immigration court hearings during US President Donald Trump’s controversial mass deportation effort in New York NY on June-December 2025. Children and spouses are traumatized as they are caught in the crossfire of family separations, leaving a broken immigrant community.
Migrants line up in the lobby of the Jacob Javits Federal building near a wall bearing a portrait of President Trump and the Preamble to the US Constitution. Agents stand outside courtrooms with papers bearing photos of their ‘target’. 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.
Most heart-wrenching are family separations. Cocha’s girls desperately grab their father Luis, futilely holding on. ‘It was very traumatic for me and my children,’ she said. ‘They took their father away.’ They say he has no criminal record will struggle without the breadwinner of the family. 'I want the government to be a little more human,' she stated.
‘Take me, not him – they will kill him!’ screamed Monica, a distraught woman from Ecuador as the family was pulled away from her husband Ruben. She was violently thrown to the floor as her children wept and taken to a nearby hospital to be examined for head injury. The officer was relieved of duties pending investigation, and then quickly reinstated. Her daughter Rosa, 12 years old, still suffers with nightmares and felt guilty that she couldn’t pull her father away from the ICE agents that fateful day. She apologized, ‘Mom, forgive me because I couldn’t hug my dad well. If I had hugged him well, they wouldn’t have taken him.’ They are seeking a therapist to help her heal.
A woman is led in shackles on the 10th floor where migrants are held in detention. There is now a legal injunction requiring ICE to comply with humane conditions.
In a tender moment of humanity, security guard Asael Jules also sheds tears viewing the sorrow of Grace, a migrant mother and child, lost in despair. Sometimes it is the quiet moments that resonate most profoundly in the collective conscience of a nation.
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…
Migrants line up in the lobby of the Jacob Javits Federal building near a wall bearing a portrait of President Trump and the Preamble to the US Constitution. Agents stand outside courtrooms with papers bearing photos of their ‘target’. 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.
Most heart-wrenching are family separations. Cocha’s girls desperately grab their father Luis, futilely holding on. ‘It was very traumatic for me and my children,’ she said. ‘They took their father away.’ They say he has no criminal record will struggle without the breadwinner of the family. 'I want the government to be a little more human,' she stated.
‘Take me, not him – they will kill him!’ screamed Monica, a distraught woman from Ecuador as the family was pulled away from her husband Ruben. She was violently thrown to the floor as her children wept and taken to a nearby hospital to be examined for head injury. The officer was relieved of duties pending investigation, and then quickly reinstated. Her daughter Rosa, 12 years old, still suffers with nightmares and felt guilty that she couldn’t pull her father away from the ICE agents that fateful day. She apologized, ‘Mom, forgive me because I couldn’t hug my dad well. If I had hugged him well, they wouldn’t have taken him.’ They are seeking a therapist to help her heal.
A woman is led in shackles on the 10th floor where migrants are held in detention. There is now a legal injunction requiring ICE to comply with humane conditions.
In a tender moment of humanity, security guard Asael Jules also sheds tears viewing the sorrow of Grace, a migrant mother and child, lost in despair. Sometimes it is the quiet moments that resonate most profoundly in the collective conscience of a nation.
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…
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Carol Guzy
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