The FDNY Sped to ICE Headquarters for a Bogus 911 Call: 'They Used Us'

On Saturday night, as protesters gathered around 26 Federal Plaza, the Lower Manhattan building where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are reportedly holding more than 100 people in stifling and inhumane conditions, someone inside the building made an emergency call summoning the New York City Fire Department, telling the dispatcher that someone was stuck in an elevator. 

A ladder truck and crew raced over from the Engine 7 Ladder 1 Fire House, half a block west on Duane Street, arriving minutes later. As the fire truck approached, the throng of protesters and police at the corner of Broadway and Duane Streets parted to let the emergency vehicle pass, and the security guard operating the giant tooth-like vehicle barricades that protect access to that block of Duane Street dropped them so the fire truck could enter. The fire engine double parked partway down the block, and firefighters hopped out, carrying all the gear they'd need to breach a stuck elevator door and effect a rescue.

But when they entered the building, they were perplexed. 

"We were checking all the elevators, and they were all working normally," one firefighter told Hell Gate. "We talked to the building manager, and he didn't know anything about any call for a stuck elevator." 

While the firefighters were inside, a white panel van of the kind ICE sometimes uses to transport detainees raced out of the federal complex's underground garage and through the gap in the crowd that had parted to let the fire truck pass, according to eyewitnesses.