An ICE agent tased a man several times while another agent tried to forcefully drag him out of his car as the man screams in pain and begs for help, as captured in a video obtained by THE CITY.
It appears to be the same man who ICE agents later took to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center late Saturday night for medical treatment, in what became a tense, hours-long standoff with protesters and NYPD officers outside the hospital.
The video, captured by bystanders, shows a masked agent firing a taser at the man, who is seated in the driver’s seat of a white car with the door open. He screams in pain throughout the video and asks to talk to a lawyer repeatedly before pleading for help from nearby witnesses.
At one point the agent appears to use a knife to cut the man’s seatbelt.
“Somebody help me,” the man can be heard screaming. “They are killing me.”
A subsequent video shows the man lying on the ground continuing to scream as agents handcuff him.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security had previously identified the man arrested that night as a Nigerian national named Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who they said had prior arrests for assault and criminal drug possession and had overstayed a tourist visa.
A spokesperson said Okeke “became physically combative attempting to punch and elbow ICE officers” and had “refused to comply with officers’ lawful commands to exit the vehicle and weaponized his vehicle to attempt to hit ICE officers.”
“Our officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, said.
The spokesperson didn’t return a request for additional comment right away about the video of the violent arrest.
Ivan Carrion, a 35-year-old who lives on the block, said he heard a car window smash from his apartment above in the late afternoon Saturday and rushed to the window to see what was going on.
“They were choking him, hitting him, trying to get him out of the car,” and the agents had bashed his car window, Carrion said.
The struggle went on for minutes, he recalled, while the man screamed in pain. Eventually the agents handcuffed the man and drove him away in another vehicle, as one of the agents jumped into the man’s car and drove it away.
“I just didn’t know they were able to forcefully force themselves into somebody’s car and pull him out like that,” he told THE CITY on Monday. “I never seen that before.”
Two days after the arrest, crumbled glass from the car window still lay strewn on the roadway.
An NYPD spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment on Okeke’s arrest history right away.
Okeke’s arrest precipitated a chaotic standoff outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center when activists got word of ICE’s presence at the hospital and rushed to the scene.
As the demonstrators arrived, federal agents pepper-sprayed several of them, eyewitnesses told THE CITY. While agents were inside with Okeke, who was being treated in the emergency room, the crowd of protesters grew, staying outside the hospital until early morning Sunday.
“There is an ICE agent detaining your neighbors inside,” one demonstrator chanted to the crowd. “Your neighbor is currently being abducted.”
At one point, an agent left the hospital in a sedan — speeding through a crowd of demonstrators trying to block the car. Later, at around 2 a.m., video from FreedomNewsTV showed the ICE agents dragging Okeke out of the hospital in handcuffs and thrusting him into a car, while NYPD officers cleared the way from the raucous crowd.
An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said they’d arrested nine people over the course of the evening, charging eight with resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration while giving a ninth person a summons.
Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who was outside the hospital until early Sunday morning said she witnessed what “appeared to be direct coordination between ICE and the NYPD, with officers cordoning off the ambulance bay to allow ICE to move the individual into their vehicles and leave.”
A spokesperson for the NYPD said they did not participate in the earlier ICE operation.
Asked about the situation at a press conference Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said “NYPD officers were not dispatched to the hospital to participate or facilitate an ICE operation. Rather, they were responding to 911 calls regarding a protest outside of the hospital.”
“And as I’ve made very clear that our laws leave nothing, no room for interpretation about the fact that our NYPD will not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Mamdani said, calling ICE raids cruel and inhumane.
Murad Awawdeh, the President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, denounced the violent arrest and called for an investigation into how the NYPD handled the situation.
“ICE has put New Yorkers in the hospital through their violent and unlawful tactics – and DHS constantly lies to the American public to justify terrorizing, brutalizing, and even killing people,” he said.
“This weekend, when a New Yorker was put in the hospital by ICE – while he repeatedly asked to speak to his lawyer – they once again showed their disregard for the law and their disrespect for immigrant New Yorkers’ lives.”
Katie Honan contributed additional reporting.
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