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The arrests, on the crowded sidewalks of Midtown Manhattan, rattled migrants residing at a hotel and shook the theater district, which is heavily trafficked by tourists.
Video
Oct. 17, 2025, 8:52 p.m. ET
Federal agents arrested two Venezuelan men on Thursday outside a Times Square hotel in New York City that is being used as a migrant shelter, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which accused the men of belonging to a Venezuelan gang.
Video shot by a witness and obtained by The New York Times shows about a dozen federal agents in plain clothes arresting several people on West 44th Street, around the corner from the entrance of the Row NYC, a hotel that is home to more than 800 migrant families.
The arrests, in broad daylight on the crowded sidewalks of Midtown Manhattan, rattled migrants residing at the Row and shook the theater district, which is heavily trafficked by tourists.
A spokeswoman for D.H.S., the parent agency of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said the two men arrested were in the country illegally and were part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang that the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The partner of one of the men who was arrested denied that he had gang ties.
Video of the arrests shows agents — some wearing vests that said F.B.I., others that said Homeland Security Investigations — taking away several people in handcuffs and placing them in unmarked vehicles as passers-by hurled expletives at them in the heart of Manhattan’s theater district.
“They’re taking all of them!” a woman exclaims in Spanish in the video.
City officials said that the agents did not enter the shelter, which would have required them to present a judicial warrant.
