Before Our Very Eyes

On September 25, 2025, an incident occurred in New York that is almost unbearable in its brutality - and yet symptomatic of what Donald Trump’s America has become. In the hallway of the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, a woman, mother of two children, was shoved to the ground by an ICE agent. Shortly before, her husband from Ecuador had been taken into custody by agents immediately after his asylum hearing. She pleads in Spanish: "Please, take me too." The plainclothes officer replies: "Do not touch me," grabs her, pushes her against the wall - then she is on the ground, the children beside her in tears. As she continues crying and begging for her husband, the officer can be heard mockingly saying "Adios" before he brutally shoves her to the ground.

Under conditions resembling war, helpers managed to bring the injured woman together with the children into the district office of Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman, located only a few steps from 26 Federal Plaza. From there the family was taken to the nearby NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where the woman had to receive medical care. Goldman later called it an "egregious act of excessive force" and demanded disciplinary consequences for those responsible.

The scene is not an isolated case. For months, reports have been piling up about ICE agents arresting migrants immediately after their hearings in the corridors of the court - often without visible warrants, often in front of small children. Just the week before, protests against this practice at the same location had led to over 70 arrests, including several members of Congress. Human rights lawyers, doctors, journalists, volunteers, all of us, have since tried to accomplish the impossible: to provide medical care for the victims, to represent them legally, to support them humanly. But the spiral of violence and fear keeps turning and the world looks on.

While a mother in Manhattan is taken to the hospital, the headlines debate Trump’s plans to "save" TikTok. While families are torn apart, Europe speaks of "dialogue" with Washington. But anyone who sees these images and continues to look on with folded arms is complicit. A government in Berlin, in Paris, in Brussels that tolerates these excesses differs in no way from a government that itself tramples on dignity.

It is not always the well-known names that are reported. It is the thousands of unknown people who go through this hell every day. And as long as the international community does not dare to sanction the United States for these systematic human rights violations, Trump and his horde will continue to try to push the world into the abyss. It is this permanent state of emergency in which right-wing parties like the AfD are growing - strengthened by the message that one only has to exercise violence decisively enough to make it acceptable.

That AfD leader Alice Weidel recently praised Trump in a speech in August 2025 as a "chance for all freedom-loving people" is more than just a scandal. It is the open confession of a party that no longer hides behind phrases. "The masks are falling," Weidel said, and she meant it as a triumph. But in truth, the masks are falling before our very eyes - not only in Washington, but also in Berlin.