SCOOP: ICE List Identifies Agent Who Beat Woman at 26 Federal Plaza
DHS refused to name the officer who attacked an immigrant mother on camera. We now know his name is Victor Mojica.
WASHINGTON — On September 25, a violent altercation inside Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza thrust the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics into the spotlight.
Video footage showed Monica Moreta-Galarza, an Ecuadorian woman seeking asylum with her family, being violently beaten by an ICE supervisor.
The incident, captured on video by multiple journalists, sparked immediate outrage—but within days, Mojica returned to duty, raising questions about accountability within federal immigration enforcement.
Up until now, the supervisor’s name was not known. But Migrant Insider can identify him as as Victor Mojica, thanks to the diligent work of ICE List.
Victor Mojica: Identity Finally Revealed
While ICE initially refused to publicly identify the agent involved in the assault, ICE List has now identified him as Victor Mojica.
Immigration court observers at 26 Federal Plaza had been complaining about Mojica’s physical behavior for months before the September 25 incident. In August 2025, he was allegedly observed forcibly removing a teenage girl from her father’s arms at the same court, raising concerns among observers over repeated aggressive behavior.
Despite the public identification, neither ICE nor DHS has confirmed Mojica’s identity or provided any official information about his employment status, disciplinary measures, or whether any criminal investigation is underway.
The Incident: A Mother Pleads, An Agent Attacks
Moreta-Galarza and her husband, Ruben Abelardo Ortiz Lopez, arrived at 26 Federal Plaza on September 25 for what they believed would be a routine immigration court hearing as part of their pending asylum application.
The family had fled Ecuador to escape violence, and a judge had just scheduled another court date for May 2026, leading Moreta-Galarza to believe her husband would be safe from immediate deportation.
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But as the family exited the courtroom with their two young children, masked ICE agents immediately moved to detain Ortiz Lopez. Video footage shows Moreta-Galarza and her young daughter desperately clinging to him, wailing as agents forcibly separated them. One agent grabbed Moreta-Galarza by the hair and pulled her away while others restrained her husband.
In a separate video that went viral, Moreta-Galarza is seen confronting agent Victor Mojica in Spanish, crying out “You guys don’t care about anything!”. Mojica, dressed in a flannel shirt and baseball cap, responded with a dismissive “Adios, adios” before violently shoving Moreta-Galarza several feet down the hallway, into a wall and pushing her to the ground. Standing over her as she lay on the floor, he ordered her to “Leave!”.
“They surrounded us, then they slammed me against the floor, they grabbed my kids and dragged them away,” Moreta-Galarza later told CNN affiliate WXTV. “They slammed me against the floor and caused my head to slam against the floor. Everyone from ICE fell on top of me”.
Moreta-Galarza struck her head during the assault and was rushed to a hospital for evaluation of potential head trauma before being released the same day. Her two traumatized children witnessed the entire incident.
Immediate Aftermath: A Mother’s Plea and Congressional Intervention
Immediately after the attack, Moreta-Galarza, her two children, and a pastor who had been assisting their asylum case—Father Fabian Arias—fled to the nearby office of U.S. Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), whose district encompasses the courthouse, seeking safety. Goldman’s office ensured she received medical treatment at the hospital.
In subsequent interviews, Moreta-Galarza described the trauma. “He pushed me inside and he told me to calm down, to shut up, shut up and because my kids were crying, he told them to shut up and he closed the door,” she told CBS News in Spanish, describing an earlier encounter with the agent in a separate room. “I didn’t do anything to him. I just begged him, and any human would have some compassion, but he didn’t have that”.
The mother, who had fled violence in Ecuador, expressed disbelief that such brutality would occur in the United States. “Over [in Ecuador], they beat us there too,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me”.
Ortiz Lopez, was transferred to a detention center in New Jersey, and his fate remains uncertain. According to ICE, Ortiz Lopez entered the U.S. illegally in March 2024 and was arrested in June for “assault and criminal obstruction of airway or bloodstream”. Goldman’s office stated that the family has pending asylum applications and “are here lawfully but are being targeted by ICE regardless”.
Rep. Dan Goldman’s Response and Call for Criminal Charges
Representative Goldman immediately condemned the assault as an “egregious act of excessive force” and called on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to take disciplinary action.
In addition, on September 25, he and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander sent a formal referral letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York urging them to investigate the ICE agent for potential felony charges.
The two-page referral accused the officer of using “excessive physical force” and depriving Moreta-Galarza of her Fourth Amendment right to be “free from unreasonable searches and seizures”. The letter cited 18 U.S.C. § 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law), which makes it a federal crime for any officer acting under color of law to willfully deprive an individual of constitutional rights.
“In this case, the officer, acting under the color of law, willfully used excessive physical force by throwing a young mother to the ground and thereby deprived the victim of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” the letter stated. Goldman and Lander also pointed to a 2022 case where a Customs and Border Protection officer was convicted under the same statute for using unreasonable force, setting a precedent for prosecution.
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“This conduct is unacceptable, and we need to make a deterrent effect by seriously investigating it for criminal wrongdoing,” Goldman told reporters. “I think anyone who sees that video would agree that that is excessive force”.
Goldman emphasized the hypocrisy of the Justice Department’s enforcement patterns: “Moreover, your own Justice Department has demonstrated a consistent pattern of filing felony charges for far less serious conduct. A hallmark of equal justice under the law is that like cases are treated alike”.
Temporary Suspension: DHS Condemns the Conduct
On September 26, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the ICE officer had been “relieved of current duties” pending a full investigation. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin issued a tweet that has since been deleted denouncing the Mojica’s conduct as “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE”.
“Our ICE law enforcement are held to the highest professional standards and this officer is being relieved of current duties as we conduct a full investigation,” the department stated.
The announcement drew cautious praise from elected officials who had been demanding accountability. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is from Uganda and will become the first immigrant mayor of the city in over a century, approved of the decision to relieve the ICE agent of his responsibilities.
DHS officials declined to clarify what “relieved of his current duties” entailed, specifically whether the officer remained employed in another capacity within ICE or whether he had been suspended or fired.
The Stunning Reversal: Mojica Reinstated After Just Three Days
But three days later, on September 29, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News that the ICE officer had been quietly reinstated and returned to duty after what they described as a “preliminary review” of the incident.
The department never officially announced the reinstatement, and officials declined to comment on the record about the officer’s return. Rep. Goldman and Comptroller Lander were outraged by the reinstatement and immediately sent another letter to Secretary Noem on September 30, demanding answers.
The letter stated: “We are horrified and outraged by reports that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer that violently and unnecessarily shoved a woman, Monica, to the ground in front of her young children at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City has been reinstated without explanation just three days after he was relieved of his duties”.
The officials warned that the rapid reinstatement had emboldened other ICE agents to escalate violence. “As one might fear from this precedent, it now appears that decision has been viewed by multiple rank and file ICE officers stationed at 26 Federal Plaza as license to escalate the use of violence against unarmed bystanders,” they wrote.
Indeed, on the very day of Mojica’s reinstatement—September 30—multiple photojournalists at 26 Federal Plaza were assaulted by masked ICE officers, with at least one reporter from Turkish news agency Anadolu, L. Vural Elibol, requiring immediate medical attention and being taken away by ambulance.
Dean Moses, amNewYork’s police bureau chief, was grabbed and forcibly pulled out of an elevator by masked agents as one shouted, “Get out of the fucking elevator”.
Goldman and Lander’s September 30 letter demanded specific answers from DHS, including: Why was the officer reinstated? What specific findings justified the decision? Who conducted the review? Do you believe this conduct is acceptable for an ICE agent? What is DHS policy on the use of excessive force?
The letter warned that if DHS did not respond by October 3, 2025, they would refer the matter to the DHS Inspector General for further investigation.
The Broader Context: 26 Federal Plaza as Deportation Epicenter
The assault on Moreta-Galarza occurred within the context of unprecedented ICE enforcement at 26 Federal Plaza, which has become the epicenter of deportations in New York City under the Trump administration. Between Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and the end of July, half of the 3,320 immigrants ICE detained in the New York City area—approximately 1,660 people—were arrested at 26 Federal Plaza.
About three-quarters of people arrested at Federal Plaza since Trump’s inauguration did not have past criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. ICE agents routinely pull multiple detainees from their hearings without giving them the chance to speak to lawyers.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Benjamin Remy, a New York Legal Assistance Group lawyer who spends several days a week working with immigrants at Federal Plaza.
Legal experts say this represents an abuse of the courts system, putting immigrants in an impossible situation: if they turn up for court hearings as instructed, they could be arrested; but if they skip their court date, a judge could automatically order their deportation.
In August 2025, a federal district court judge granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting ICE from holding people in abusive conditions at 26 Federal Plaza after the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York, and Wang Hecker LLP filed a class action lawsuit challenging the “inhumane, illegal” and unconstitutional conditions. The judge labeled the holding area on the tenth floor as so overcrowded and deplorable that conditions were potentially “unconstitutional and inhumane”.
Monica Moreta-Galarza’s Current Status
As of November 2025, Moreta-Galarza remains in the United States with her two children, though her legal status and the outcome of her asylum application remain uncertain. Her husband, Ruben Abelardo Ortiz Lopez, remains in ICE custody in New Jersey.
Father Fabian Arias, who accompanied Moreta-Galarza on the day of the assault, confirmed that the family intends to sue ICE for excessive use of force. A federal habeas corpus case, Ortiz-Lopez v. Francis, was filed on September 26, 2025 in the Southern District of New York, with documents including a declaration from Monica Moreta-Galarza.
In interviews following the assault, Moreta-Galarza made a direct appeal to President Trump for compassion. “I am asking the president directly that he please have compassion for us,” she said through tears.
When asked what message she would give to other immigrant families, her attorney said she feared “that the same thing will happen to them, that violence will be used against them”.
Reflecting on the incident weeks later, she told BBC News Mundo: “I suffered a lot in my country. I had no protection and the authorities there didn’t care. I never thought the same thing would happen to her in the US. It’s very ugly. I feel like I’m worthless now”.
Conclusion: Accountability Remains Elusive
Nearly two months after Victor Mojica violently assaulted Monica Moreta-Galarza, no criminal charges have been filed, no disciplinary action has been publicly announced, and the ICE supervisor remains on duty.
Despite Rep. Goldman’s formal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi for potential federal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 242, there is no public indication that the Department of Justice has opened an investigation.
The case stands as a stark example of what critics describe as unchecked brutality in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
For Moreta-Galarza and thousands of other immigrants passing through 26 Federal Plaza, the promise of due process has given way to what Father Fabian Arias called “a state of terror”.
“This government is creating a state of terror that isn’t limited to migrants. It’s terrible,” Arias said. “What country am I living in? Where is the law?”
Editor’s Note: The videos used in this story are from ProPublica on X. Follow them. They’re doing incredible work on the immigration beat.
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Happy to live in Canada, where this behaviour is treated as criminal & perpetrators are prosecuted! 🇨🇦
Sue the bxxxxx in fed court and ice and phrunp for a $ billion dollars. They dont have immunity. Tgsrs all bullxxxx. Under federap civil rights law.