Humans of ICE

A___ came to NY from Punjab, Pakistan in 2021 on a Tourist visa to visit family in New York City when he was 18 years old.  He was originally planning on just visiting, but his older brother wanted to stay so he decided to stay too.  They moved to Endwell, NY in 2022.  His family runs several local businesses, including a local restaurant.

   On September 15th, 2025, he was very sick and went to a 1PM doctor’s appointment at UHS Primary Care in Endwell.  Undercover officers pulled him over and pulled him from the car.  They said that they had officers waiting outside his house to take his family (he later found out that this was a bluff).  He was on the phone with a friend when the cops pulled him over.  The cops hung up the phone and he could hear his family trying to call him but they would not let him answer the phone.

    The officers pulled him from the car and he started vomiting.  He said that he needed his inhaler from the car but they wouldn’t give it to him.  They called their supervisor and had him waiting in a car for 15-20 minutes on McKinley Avenue.   They then drove to his family’s house with a Dodge SUV and 2 more cars from local police, Ford SUVs.

     A_’s home is a 2-family house, with his uncles living on the first floor and him and his cousin on the second floor.  When they asked him who lived on the first floor, he lied and said “I don’t know.  It’s a white family and we don’t really speak to them.”  So the cops did not go in there and his uncles were safe.  There’s a guest house behind the house.  He said, “it’s an old Black lady.”  They knocked on her door and asked her to come out for questioning.

   The ICE officers called his cousin.  They said, “We arrested your cousin and we came to give the car keys to you so you can bring the car back from the doctor’s office.”  When the cousin came out for the keys, they arrested him too.

   They did not allow him to call any family.  They took him in a car to the Holiday Inn parking lot in Binghamton and held him for 2 hours in the parking lot.  He said there were a lot of ICE officers and vehicles there.  Then, they detained him in a solitary room in Syracuse.  They pushed him to sign documents stating he was self-deporting, but he refused to sign because the documents were all wrong- they said he was from Ecuador, when he is from Pakistan.  He said he wanted to speak with a lawyer before signing anything.  They told him he would be taken to the Buffalo County Jail.  They let him have one phone call and he told his family they were taking him to Buffalo.

   The next day they took him to the Broome County jail.  This was very lucky because his uncles, who are citizens, could visit him.  A lot of his family could not visit because they are not citizens.  He requested to be put with his cousin but they put him in solitary confinement for 6 days.  His cousin got sick in solitary confinement, and was hospitalized for 7 days.  No calls to family for 7 days— then he was taken to K-pod.  He was told he had a court date for October 2, but there was no call on October 2, so they then gave him a new date.  He had 2-3 differnt court dates, then he was released on bail.  His family had sold their Halal restaurant to pay for the bail and legal fees.  A_ paid $5000 and his family paid $10,000.

    He has a lawyer from NYC and has applied for asylum.  He currently has an ankle monitor and is on the ADT program.  He drives for a delivery service, works at a local gas station and needs to report to Syracuse every 3 weeks.  His cousin is out on bail under the same arrangement.

He said he wants the people in the jail to be treated better.  He said that when he was there the officers would not let him and his brother pray.  He said that the ICE officers are supposed to visit 1x/week, but instead they only visited 3 times during the time he was there.

   He is worried because his brother has a court date in NYC in a few weeks and he is afraid ICE will detain him on his way to court.  

He said that his cousin was also brought deportation papers while he was inside, but just like him the papers were incorrect so he also didn’t sign.  His cousin arrived in 2024, but the ICE officers were saying they had records of him coming in 2022.  At one point, they brought deportation papers to his cousin saying “You signed it.”  But he had never signed anything.  He feels they may be confusing him with somebody else with the same name.  

He talked about some of the folks we already met, whose narratives you have already read on this website, humansofice.org. He said there were many Chinese people in K-pod for 3 months, then they were all gone. We talked about Guan Heng’s case, and he said he didn’t think he would win asylum.  He said that he only saw one person whose case was approved, and it was a guy from Belarus. Now that he hears that Guan Heng is free, he wants to shake his hand.

Interview collected by Christina Zawerucha on 1/24/26. Illustration by local artist Blue Magnolia.