Federal immigration agents allegedly used a Taser on a man while attempting to forcibly remove him from his car in Brooklyn on Saturday night, an encounter that left him hospitalized and sparked protests outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, footage shows.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Chidozie Wilson Okeke, a Nigerian national accused of overstaying a visa and having prior arrests for assault and criminal drug possession, on May 2.
Footage shared by the New York Immigration Coalition appears to show agents using a Taser on a man seated in a car before the hospital incident. In the video, the individual can be heard shouting while agents attempt to remove him from the vehicle. Federal agents appear to drag the man out of the vehicle.
A spokesperson for DHS told Newsweek, “This criminal was NOT tased by law enforcement.”
DHS said Okeke refused orders to exit his vehicle, attempted to use the car to strike officers, and became physically combative, prompting agents to use “the minimum amount of force necessary” to make the arrest. The agency said Okeke later requested medical attention and was taken to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, where he remained noncompliant during evaluation and was ultimately cleared by staff.
The man’s detention drew a crowd of protesters outside the hospital in the Bushwick neighborhood, where tensions escalated as federal agents sought to remove him from the facility. Video from the scene shows officers holding back demonstrators as agents escorted the handcuffed man into a vehicle.
Footage captured by Freedom News shows agents later removing the handcuffed man from the hospital and placing him into a vehicle while officers held back protesters.
DHS said that Okeke entered the United States on August 27, 2023, on a tourist visa that required him to depart by February 26, 2024. According to DHS, he did not comply with the terms of his visa and remained in the country beyond the authorized period.
A New York Police Department spokesperson told Newsweek officers responded at about 10:25 p.m. ET to multiple 911 calls reporting a “disorderly” group of roughly 200 people near Wyckoff Avenue between Stanhope and Stockholm streets. Officers observed individuals blocking traffic and hospital entrances and issued repeated orders to disperse, police said.
Nine people were taken into custody, including eight who were arrested and charged with offenses including resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, reckless endangerment, and criminal mischief, police said. One person was issued a summons and released, according to police.
Police said some protesters threw debris into the street, and one person was arrested on a reckless endangerment charge after allegedly throwing garbage at a passing vehicle. Later, at about 2:15 a.m., as federal agents attempted to leave the hospital with the detainee, protesters blocked access points, and one individual broke the rear window of an ICE vehicle, authorities said. Additional arrests were made between about 2:19 a.m. and 2:30 a.m.
The NYPD said its role was limited to crowd control and maintaining access to the hospital.
DHS said that protesters damaged ICE vehicles and assaulted officers, causing minor injuries.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference on Monday that “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.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, called for the city to investigate the incident.
“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,” Awawdeh said in a press statement.
“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. And when the NYPD helped ICE disappear our neighbor, they showed that our sanctuary policies need much stricter enforcement.”
New York City’s sanctuary policies limit cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE. Under these policies, the NYPD does not conduct civil immigration enforcement and generally does not honor ICE detainer requests or share information about individuals in custody, except in cases involving certain serious crimes. Progressives and supporters have said the policies are intended to ensure that immigrants can access services and interact with police without fear of deportation, while critics on the right argue that sanctuary policies threaten public safety for residents.
The Trump administration’s deportation policy has pushed ICE into the forefront of the national conversation surrounding immigration enforcement. Expanded interior enforcement and the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants have elevated scrutiny of ICE’s tactics.
Federal immigration arrests in the New York City region have surged in 2026 even as deportations have declined, according to Gothamist’s analysis of data from ICE obtained by the Deportation Data Project.
The data, which includes entries through March 11, 2026, shows that in the first eight weeks of the year, ICE arrested more than 1,200 people in the region, compared with 462 during the same period in 2025. But only 195 of those arrested in 2026 were deported, versus 342 a year earlier, a drop from about 74 percent to roughly 16 percent.
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