Two young men cry inconsolably and cling to their father's basketball sweatshirt, while the man is dragged to a destiny that will take him far from them: deportation after attending an immigration appointment in New York. The long arm of ICE was the protagonist of the winning image of the World Press Photo. Its author, Carol Guzy, puts it in a few words: “no one is safe here.”
First modification: 04/24/2026 - 05:02
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The pain of forced family separation under Donald Trump's second term was featured in the World Press Photo award, the most important for journalistic and documentary photography.
The winning image showed a painfully everyday scene under a gaze that attempts to turn it into a warning against indifference.
"I hope it raises awareness. This is becoming a new routine in the United States and it shouldn't be," the author, Carol Guzy, a 70-year-old veteran and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, declared in conversation with the EFE agency.
Guzy has dedicated herself to walking the halls of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Manhattan, documenting what she describes as the “heartbreak” of separation.
In that facility, one of the few federal spaces that still occasionally allows photojournalists to enter, immigration courts operate, one of the favorite hunting grounds of the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
There, those who go to their appointments very frequently end up suffering the fate of those who have failed in their duties, and not of those who have fulfilled them.
The portrait of human consequences
The winning image showed one of those moments. Luis, a migrant of Ecuadorian origin, is violently separated from his family. The man, the breadwinner, leaves behind a wife and three children between seven and 15 years old. Two of them cry uncontrollably as they try to cling to him.
"The girls were just clinging to their father with such desperation that it seemed like they were trying to prevent him from being taken away. It's impossible not to feel the pain that runs through the entire scene," Guzy described.
“Family separations were always the most difficult to endure," adds the Washington-based photographer, who frequently travels to New York to take advantage of the still open doors of the Javits building and document the day-to-day life of the immigration courts for the 'Miami Herald', which published the winning image.
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"There are moments when we all end up crying, even those of us who are there working. Hearing the screams of the children when something like this happens is devastating," says Guzy.
The World Press Photo jury considered that the image reflected the human consequences of political decisions, such as the mass deportation of Donald Trump's second government.
The director of the prestigious award, Joumana el Zein Khoury, highlighted that the graphic “shows the inconsolable pain of children who lose their father in a place built to deliver justice” and documents the ravages of an immigration policy that “has turned the courts into scenes of destroyed lives.”
“No one is safe here,” Guzy condensed, referring to the United States that people like Luis and his daughters have lived in.
Even for the photographer herself, seasoned in covering conflicts and catastrophes around the world, it is difficult to recognize her own country: "I have photographed wars and crises in many countries, but witnessing this in my own country has a completely different weight. As an American citizen, it is disconcerting."
A chime heard?
Another of the winners of the World Press Photo, the Spanish Brais Lorenzo (awarded in the European version for his coverage of the fires in Galicia), highlighted Guzy's work for the potential impact it can have beyond the immediate drama it reflects.
"I think that precisely what these types of awards help at an international or global level is to focus on relevant topics that can start from a local level (...) but are also extrapolated to a global level," Lorenzo commented.
Whether or not the harrowing story can generate any change remains to be seen, but this April 23, 'NBC' reports that the US immigration agency ICE has instructed its agents to refrain from entering homes without court orders and carry out detentions in immigration courts only in the case of foreigners with current deportation orders.
Two senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told the network that agents have received verbal instructions that reverse two of the most rejected practices of the immigration police.
Before that, ICE appeared to have suspended mass raids, and upon being confirmed by the Senate to replace the controversial Kristi Noem, the new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin promised that entry into homes would only be carried out with court orders.
Actions such as that of ICE in Minneapolis aroused indignation even among Republican legislators, when they were observed breaking down doors and entering heavily armed homes where those affected demanded that they show court orders.
With EFE
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