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A visual #journalist identified as L. Vural Elibol of the Turkish news agency Anadolu hit his head on the floor at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan after US #ICE agents pushed one journalist off a public elevator & shoved another journalist to the floor, acc/to video & witnesses.
A bystander held Elibol’s head & a nurse treated him until an ambulance arrived, witnesses said. Video showed him in a neck brace as paramedics wheeled him out on a stretcher.
The other #journalists, amNewYork police bureau chief Dean Moses & Olga Fedorova, a freelance photographer whose clients include AP, were not seriously injured.
#DHS Asst Secy Tricia McLaughlin defended the agents’ actions, saying they were being “swarmed by agitators & members of the press, which obstructed operations.” She added, “Rioters & sanctuary politicians who encourage individuals to interfere with arrests are actively creating hostile environments….”
Moses said the situation escalated when masked agents grabbed him & shoved him from an elevator on the 12th floor as he was attempting to photograph them arresting a woman who had just left #immigration court.
“I walked into the elevator behind them, & they started screaming at me,” Moses told amNewYork. “Then they pushed me, grabbed me by my arms, & started pulling me out of the elevator. I tried to hold on, but I got shoved out.”
Video taken by photographer Stephanie Keith showed that during the struggle, another agent shoved Fedorova, who fell backward toward where Elibol lay on the floor.
Fedorova said photographers had worked in the hallway outside immigration court for months without incident. The agents making arrests Tuesday, she said, didn’t announce any limits where #journalists could go, & they hadn’t made it clear they were making an arrest when they got on the elevator.
“If they tell us to get out, to not cross a certain line, we follow their orders,” Fedorova said. “In this case, it was not clear to anyone that this was a detention at all.”
The episode happened just days after a federal agent at the Manhattan #immigration court was captured on video shoving an Ecuadorian woman into a wall & onto the floor after her husband was arrested.
#law #Trump #FirstAmendment #FreePress #PoliceBrutality #Gestapo #Sturmabteilung
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