The night before 25,000 New Yorkers marched the streets of Lower Manhattan crying for the abolition of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a smaller, quieter gathering took place about 20 blocks north, to commemorate those slain in Donald Trump’s war on migrants.
New York City, that night — Thursday, Jan. 29, 19 degrees — was off its usual rhythm. A snowstorm had just made the city its home for the weekend, and things had not yet resumed their usual pace. A heaviness prevailed. Taxi cabs covered in ice residue vied to merge onto FDR Drive, pedestrians waited single file between snowbanks for the walk sign to flash. There was a sense that things were not as they should be.
On 1st Avenue and East 23rd street, outside a Veterans Affairs hospital, people began to gather at roughly 5 p.m. The sun had just begun the final leg of its descent, and soft pinks and oranges blanketed the sky. “Vigil right this way,” announced a woman standing at the end of the street in a long black puffer coat and neon yellow vest, waving her arms to direct newcomers to an area cordoned off by police barriers. “Straight down. Vigil right this way.” She smiled as people filed in. No documentation needed to mourn.
As the crowd gathered, one could easily infer the event had something to do with nurses and nursing. A medley of labor and community organizations had put together the vigil, National Nurses United (NNU), New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), and Doctors Council prominently among them. A union for federal employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), too; the United Federation of Teachers, Veterans for Peace, NYC Central Labor Council, and Hands Off NYC.
Despite the size of the crowd, which eventually numbered around 2,000, according to the New York Daily News, the event felt homegrown. Amidst the sea of NNU and NYSNA crimson — beanie hats, gloves, scarves; NYC nurses were on their third week of striking — came people from every walk of life. Young and old, men and women, students and teachers, every race and color.
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An older man towards the back of the crowd walked slowly, step by step, holding up a thin cardboard sign: ABOLISH ICE. His cane clicked and clacked on the ice. Thirty feet ahead of him, a group of women congregated in a circle to light their candles, fumbling with their sole pocket lighter in the wind. Naomi, an older woman wearing colorful knit gloves and clear-frame glasses, appeared producing plastic, battery-powered candles: “Here, take these. They’ll keep us warm.” Snaps as the candles were lit, then: laughter, smiles, and, as it were, a certain warmth. It seemed the cardboard sign ahead was right: Love melts ICE.
“The people of Minneapolis are so unbelievably brave,” Naomi, a former journalist and a pre-school teacher, told me, speaking slowly but firmly. “I started to really feel the terror. And I needed to do something. I just needed to show up.” Naomi’s father, like Alex Pretti, worked for the Department of Veteran Affairs.
The crowd shuffled forward until it reached the hospital, then huddled together in the street. Boots scuffled through the slush. Arms linked. Someone began to play Bruce Springsteen’s new song, “Streets of Minneapolis.” There were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood … We’ll take our stand for this land …. Our city’s heart and soul persist.
A tall man with a kind face buried beneath glasses and a hunter green coat lit his candle in mine. His name, he told me, was Jorge. (Actually, when I asked: “I’m not a citizen, so I have to be careful … my name is Jorge.”) “I’m here because I’m outraged at what happened to Alex Pretti, and Renee Good, and all the other people who’ve been subjected to ICE’s violence,” he told me, his voice breaking. “I can’t believe the level of impunity that there is in this country. This is a democracy, and it’s not OK, and we have to put our bodies in the streets, our voices, we have to do whatever we can to stop this.”
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A man’s voice rang out across the crowd. It was time for the speakers. Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, began. “We have witnessed over 30-plus immigrants who have died or were murdered in ICE custody. Alex Pretti was standing up for his neighbor who he probably didn’t even know. And he was executed for it. Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were executed. They were executed. Shame.”
Shame, the crowd echoed. A lone voice: “How many more have to die?”
“Alex Pretti was the ninth person to be killed by ICE and Border Patrol in 2026 alone,” the next speaker, an American Federation of Government Employees union officer, declared, counting those who’ve died in ICE custody. “Repeat after me and say their names.” So the crowd did.
“Geraldo Lunas Campos.” Geraldo Lunas Campos.
“Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres.” Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres.
“Parady La.” Parady La.
“Victor Manuel Diaz.” Victor Manuel Diaz.
“Heber Sanchez Domínguez.” Heber Sanchez Domínguez.
“Keith Porter.” Keith Porter.
“Renee Nicole Good.” Renee Nicole Good.
“Alex Pretti.” Alex Pretti.
Alex Pretti.
Alex Pretti.
A moment of silence.
The moment stretched into minutes, the quiet deafening. Such a quiet is rare in the city that never sleeps. To my left, a man and a woman clasped hands, their heads bowed. To my right, a small boy looked up at his father; his father looked back with glassy eyes. There was a sense of oneness, a sense that those standing next to you might take a bullet for you. One felt that the crowd might go to the ends of the Earth to protect one another.
One voice at a time, the crowd resumed chanting. Though the right has caricatured protesters as violent and destructive, every word out of their mouths seemed to be with love. Immigrants are welcome here. No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here. The people united will never be defeated.
“As a New Yorker and an American and a public school teacher, I love my neighbors, and I love my city,” a woman, Esther Gottesman, bundled in a bright pink scarf told me. “And I believe that loving a place means that you fight for what’s right, and that you stand up for each other and take care of each other.
“What’s happening is unacceptable, and that’s not who I want to be as an American. It’s our responsibility to stand up against it over and over again.”
“All Americans, all immigrants, anybody who calls this great land home,” said Oliver, a recent mechanical engineering graduate, “must show up.”
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As the crowd dispersed — peacefully, and without incident — people made their way to the low wall bordering the VA hospital and began to make a memorial. Each person set down their candle, carefully, gently, and bowed their head. A conglomeration of individual moments of silence. There were flowers, framed photographs of ICE’s victims. A shared recognition that, were it not for fate’s unknowable ways, each of us could be a photograph on the mantel. A sign: May we all be granted your courage.
As I walked away from the vigil, hands sapped of feeling, trailing the few who had stayed behind to mourn longer, I stopped. To my left, a cardstock poster stuck in a snowbank, a lone plastic candle in front of it. Justice for Pretti, it read. Alex Pretti. Hero.
