ICE Took Nancy Martinez in Front of Her Children. Now She Is Suing the United States.
A federal complaint says masked immigration agents detained Martinez outside her New Haven home, traumatized her children, and deported her to Mexico after 15 years in the United States.
Nancy Martinez was taking her children to school when masked federal immigration agents surrounded her car outside her home in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood.
Her daughter and son were already buckled into their seats. Moments later, Martinez was in handcuffs and placed in the back of a vehicle. Her children were left outside, clinging to each other and sobbing as their mother was taken away.
One year and six days later, Martinez is suing the United States.
The federal complaint, filed in Connecticut’s U.S. District Court and announced Monday by Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, seeks redress for the arrest, the deportation, and the trauma Martinez says federal agents inflicted on her family.
Martinez’s lawsuit is about more than the moment federal agents detained her. It is about the damage that followed her children home.
Martinez, who is originally from Mexico, had lived in the United States for 15 years before she was detained on June 9, 2025. According to the complaint and statements made during Monday’s press conference, she was 37 at the time and was taking her 13-year-old daughter, Monse, and 8-year-old son to school when agents approached.
Martinez said through a translator that masked agents surrounded the car and placed her in tight handcuffs. She said she only understood she was being deported when an agent made a motion with his hands that looked like a plane taking off.
“Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw looking out the window,” Martinez said through a translator. Her children, she said, were clinging to each other and crying out for her as she was driven farther away.
According to Michael Wishnie, a Yale Law professor and supervising attorney for Martinez, she spent about a month in immigration detention before being deported to Mexico City.
Now she is speaking about the case from Mexico by Zoom while her children remain in the United States.
“It pains me to know I cannot give my daughter a hug after she walks across the stage or help with her hair on her milestone birthday,” Martinez said, referring to her daughter’s quinceañera.
That is what family separation looks like after the agents leave: missed graduations, birthdays prepared from another country, school mornings changed, and children left to carry fear after their mother has been removed from daily life.
The complaint says the damage to Martinez’s children has been profound.
Her son, now 9, was described in the lawsuit as having changed from a “bubbly child” into a boy who regularly interrupts class with sobs. Monse, now 14, was described as “a shell of herself,” withdrawn, irritable, and reticent. Martinez herself has begun taking antidepressants and sleep medication to cope with the separation from her children, according to the complaint.
At Monday’s press conference, Monse spoke about the moment her mother was taken.
“One second she was standing next to me. The next second agents were taking her away,” she said.
She also described what the separation has done to her brother.
“He is constantly scared, and he never wants to leave my side,” Monse said.
That is the harm the lawsuit asks a federal court to recognize.
The complaint seeks redress from the United States for what it describes as “the abusive manner in which the agents abducted Ms. Martinez off the street, the terror and trauma they inflicted on her family, and the reckless disregard the agents demonstrated for her and her children.”
The lawsuit also alleges that federal agents used scare tactics intended to intimidate Martinez and other migrants. The complaint cites statements from President Donald Trump, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as part of its argument that federal agencies sought to create an atmosphere of fear that discouraged migrants from asserting their legal rights.
The complaint also alleges that ICE targeted New Haven to punish the city for being a sanctuary jurisdiction.
That allegation matters because immigration enforcement is often described as if it is only paperwork, warrants, detainers, or removal orders. Martinez’s lawsuit describes something more direct: masked agents taking a mother in front of her children, a family left traumatized, and a city allegedly targeted because of its sanctuary policies.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, and National Immigration Law Center President Kica Matos were among the speakers at Monday’s press conference, held in a Yale Law School classroom.
“The administration said it was gonna be deporting the worst of the worst,” Blumenthal said. “Nancy Martinez did everything right. ICE did everything wrong.”
Matos spoke directly to Monse.
“Monse, you are a badass,” Matos said. “Your courage, both when it came to fighting for your mom and protecting your brother, is nothing short of remarkable.”
Then Matos named the harm plainly.
“Arresting a mother in front of her children and leaving them alone on the street — that is not law enforcement. That is cruelty in uniform.”
DHS did not respond to the publication’s questions about why masked agents forcibly detained Martinez outside her home instead of issuing a notice to surrender for deportation.
The legal record also includes a state case from the months before Martinez’s arrest. According to the complaint, Martinez had been attending state court hearings after being arrested by city police in March 2025 and charged with assault in the third degree and breach of peace in the second degree following an altercation with her sister-in-law over a babysitting dispute. The lawsuit says the state dropped all charges in exchange for Martinez attending anger management classes, which she began in May.
That detail belongs in the record, but it is not what Martinez’s federal lawsuit is asking the court to decide.
Her complaint is focused on the manner of the arrest, the trauma to her children, the alleged use of intimidation, and the decision to remove a mother from her family in a way the lawsuit says caused lasting harm.
Family separation does not end when a deportation is complete. It continues in the children left behind, the milestones missed, and the ordinary routines that no longer feel ordinary after a parent is taken.
For Martinez’s family, the damage described in the complaint is not abstract. It is a child crying in class. It is a teenager becoming withdrawn. It is a mother watching from another country as her daughter grows up without her there.
That is what Martinez is asking a federal court to see.
ICE did not only remove Nancy Martinez from the United States. Federal agents took a mother from her children in the street, and the family says the damage followed them home.
Now that family is asking the United States to answer for it.
Immigration enforcement does not end when agents leave the street. It continues through family separation, childhood trauma, deportation, fear, missed milestones, and the long aftermath carried by the people left behind.
Americans Against ICE documents that harm — the raids, arrests, detention systems, deportations, contractors, county partnerships, and family trauma that official statements often flatten or erase.
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