Cries from the Courtroom
About the author: Mikaela Lavandero is a recent graduate of Princeton University who participated in research conducted through the School of Public and International Affairs’s pilot program led by Professor Amelia Frank-Vitale. Lavandero conducted court observations in New York City Immigration Courts between June 2025 and February 2026 as part of the program. Previously, she had conducted immigration court observations in Miami, Boston, and Newark courts.
Abstract: This piece is pulled from a journal entry from July 31st, 2025, during an especially tumultuous visit to New York City’s Immigration Court in which the perils and violence of family separation and ICE turned a courtroom hallway into a scene of chaos.
Keywords
New York City; ICE arrests; families
Citation
Lavandero, Mikaela. 2026. “Cries from the Courtroom.” Semi-Structured (Washington, D.C.), On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, vol. 1 (3). https://doi.org/10.57912/34113315
It was one of the hottest days of the summer. The temperature was climbing close to 100 degrees as I made my way to 26 Federal Plaza that morning. I had gone to 26 Fed a couple of times by now, and I felt comfortable wading my way through the crowds of people by the barricade, flashing my ID, and then swiftly heading through security. I took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, where I saw one of my colleagues from my summer work at an immigration law firm. An attorney, she would meander the corridors, make sure waiting respondents knew their rights, and try to accompany them to the elevator banks down to the lobby when it was time, shielding them from the mess of officers and reporters.
From the hallway, I watched as a courtroom door slowly slid open. Behind it, a family appeared. The father was holding onto his wife; she was holding their two young children – a toddler in her arms and an eight-year-old by the hand. Immediately, swarms of officers grabbed hold of the father. He didn’t fight it; he didn’t say anything. But they yanked and pulled him; they grabbed the fragile hand of the eight-year-old and tore her away from her father. The sound of screaming pierced through the hallway. The eight-year-old was yelling; she was pleading. Mi papá, mi papá, mi papá. Her mother shrank into a puddle of tears, kneeling down to the ground. The officers pushed the father until he was fully separated from his family before they ushered him through a door and down the back steps. Hordes of journalists were also shouting and clicking their cameras. Even when the father had fully disappeared, the chaos continued.
The pleading, the grating cries for their father and husband filled the hallway with anguish. Reporters were crying; I turned around to watch as one of them wiped her eyes but kept her filming camera steady. Reporters flickered their cameras and hounded this family—these children—with photos and videos and questions in the middle of tragedy.
My colleague pulled them out of the mess and led them to the elevators before ushering me to take over. I jumped out of a trance. What I had witnessed…it felt incomprehensible. It felt like a New York Times headline that you only read about; you don’t watch it happen in front of you. The screaming continued to ring in my ears, in my head. Mi papá, mi papá, mi papá.
Away from the catastrophic tragedy of the twelfth floor, I huddled with the family in the lobby. The mother’s tears streamed down her face, and the eight-year-old’s crying only intensified. I watched as a volunteer came up to them and handed them flyers with information on how to contact a loved one in custody. Now in a stroller, I watched the toddler. I bent down on my knees, my thin slacks against the cold tile floor. No te preocupes, I whispered to the young girl. I traced her hair in between my fingertips and repeated the mantra over and over to her. I didn’t know what else to tell her. Donde esta papá? She asked, and all I could tell her was not to worry as I ran my hands through her bangs and began tapping her pink shoes so they began to sparkle.
A security officer told us we had to get out of the way. The toddler was calm now, though her mother and sister were crying steadily. The officer pressured us again to leave, and I told the mother not to worry, that I had the girls. I got the little one buckled in her stroller, and I pushed her out of the building, holding the sister’s hand as the mother followed.
Outside, the heat was abrasive the second the doors opened. The mother was on the phone with family, crying and relaying in between sobs and breaths for air what they had done—that they had torn her husband away, literally from the hands of her daughter—and that she did not know what to do. I tried comforting the older sister. Though only eight, it was clear to me that she understood exactly what was going on. I offered to move the family and the stroller over to the shade, to get us out of the blazing sun, but the mother shook her head. She hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and I watched as the three of them walked down Broadway.
I followed her lead, took a deep breath, and made my way back upstairs. There were more families, more children, more crises. I could escort them through crowds, calm their kids, and record what I saw, but I could not stop fathers from being pulled away. There was renewed power in writing, and I resolved to continue diligent notetaking, observing, and recording as my own form of seeking justice. I helplessly made my way to the elevator bank. With heightened frustration and a commitment to justice, I rode back up to the twelfth floor, where I would encounter dozens of similar stories.
About the issue
This article is part of On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, a special issue of Semi-Structured. This collection features the work of 22 student ethnographers, who offer insights, analysis, and experiences based on hundreds of hours in immigration courtrooms across the country over the last few years. Through their work in observation projects under the direction of scholar-activists Lauren Heidbrink, Amelia Frank-Vitale, and Rebecca Galemba, students gained critical training in ethnographic practice and a crash course in immigration law, especially in the disjunctures between law on the books and law in practice. Understanding that wider audiences would benefit from hearing and learning directly from their students, Heidbrink, Frank-Vitale, and Galemba approached Semi-Structured to steward this thoughtful, ambitious collection. We are honored to run this issue and invite readers to consider what student observers witnessed, felt, and learned in court and why ethnographic observations are important to broader publics.
Semi-Structured is the open-access journal from the Public Ethnography Lab. The journal is dedicated to showcasing ethnography as it unfolds in the world. This journal exists because we believe ethnographic work matters beyond the academy—that the insights generated through sustained engagement with communities, organizations, and institutions can and should inform decisions, shape practices, and drive meaningful change.